“The witness was caught completely unprepared, as was the defence. This is a procedural method that raises several doubts. Doubts that intensify when, as happened in front of you, here at this hearing, we see what that supposed criminal record consisted of, what really took place, regardless of the charges, which, I cannot emphasize too strongly, were never brought before a court.

“You heard the witness’s account, which there is no reason to doubt. The act of resisting an officer of the law, and the concurrent one of aiding and abetting, came about when the witness was not even aware that the two men who had set off in pursuit of her friend were officers. Or rather, when one of them had set off in pursuit, had caught up with her friend and was hitting him, according to the perfectly plausible account given by the witness.

“Basically, the witness defended a friend, though without any particular display of violence, from what she believed to be a politically motivated attack. I need hardly recall that the duty magistrate, that long-ago evening in 1987, must have seen the situation for what it was, because he ordered that the officers not proceed with the arrest of Signora Delle Foglie.”

I lingered some more on Lorenza’s reliability, reading out passages from her testimony, underlining how coherent and credible her account was, how the explanation she had supplied during the appeal hearing clarified the contradictions she had fallen into under cross-examination at the original trial.

I probably spoke even longer than I needed to. When I had exhausted the subject, I suggested we stop. Judge Marinelli agreed, and the hearing was adjourned until the following morning at the usual time.

255

Lorenza

That was how it ended, without a real ending.

Whenever I look back, whenever I look at the bigger picture of my actions, my emotions (including, above all, those I wasn’t aware of), my ambiguous victories and very obvious defeats, I recognize certain fault lines, the results of subterranean upheavals in my consciousness. One of these is situated in that period in 1987. I went in a boy and came out, without realizing it, a man.

The encounter between Lorenza and me changed my life. I’m sure it didn’t change hers.

She had been my involuntary mentor, the woman who had distractedly accompanied me through a metaphorical wood for a few months. Having emerged from that wood, I found myself alone in the open, dangerous spaces of adulthood.