To obtain an annulment from the Supreme Court, there needs to have been a serious violation of procedural rules, and in this case there hadn’t been any violations of that kind. Or else the verdict needs to be compromised by a total lack of grounds or by grounds that were manifestly illogical.

I did try this. It’s the final attempt, when a hearing has been conducted in the normal way. You maintain that the grounds for the ruling are lacking at some fundamental points or are so wrong as to be manifestly illogical.

In reality, that rarely happens. You just have to be a decent servant of the law to write a ruling that may be shaky from a theoretical point of view, weak from a grammatical point of view, even very questionable as to its ability to do justice, 276and yet free of the defects of an absence of motivation or a manifestly contradictory motivation.

The appeal court’s ruling, as written by Associate Judge Valentini, was more than decent, and certainly not characterized by “lack, contradictoriness or manifest illogicality of motivation”, as article 606 of the code of criminal procedure puts it.

I made an effort to find something to cling to, exaggerating the flaws that definitely existed in the ruling, in order to try to obtain an annulment, along with a deferment that would allow me to take my chances in a new appeal hearing. But I was the first to admit that a favourable outcome was unlikely. If I’d been in the shoes of the judges in the Supreme Court, I would have rejected my appeal.

Lorenza came several times to the office to keep up with developments. First for the filing of the appeal court ruling. Then the writing of the appeal to the Supreme Court. Then the date set for the hearing. She was strangely calm. I think she kept telling herself she had done everything possible to help her son and that, at least from that point of view, she had nothing to reproach herself for.

She was calm, and almost old.

Ageing isn’t a linear process. Just as time isn’t a linear entity. It isn’t a comprehensible entity. Nobody really understands it. Nobody can define it. Try to talk about time without using metaphors, says a famous linguist. You’ll come away empty-handed. Would time still be time for us if we couldn’t waste it or schedule it? All we can really say is that it basically goes in one direction and that the final destination is well known.