Reasonable Doubts (10 page)

In the kitchen, the smell of children was less obvious, covered by the nice smells of food. I remember thinking how good this apartment smelled, and then I wondered what the bedroom was like, and what it smelled like. I immediately felt ashamed and forced myself to think about something else.

Natsu put on a CD.
Feels Like Home
by Norah Jones. At low volume, so as not to wake the little girl.

She asked me what I wanted to drink and I said I wouldn’t mind a little rum if she had any. She took a bottle of Jamaican rum from a cupboard and poured some into two large, thick glasses.

We were sitting at an orange-varnished wooden table. As we talked, I touched the surface of the table with my fingertips. I liked the touch of it, rough and smooth at the same time, and the bright orange colour. Everything in that kitchen gave me a feeling of sweet-smelling, light-filled solidity.

“You do know I came to watch you in court, just before Fabio appointed you?”

For some reason, I thought for a moment of saying, no, I didn’t know. Then I thought better of it.

“Yes, I saw you.”

“Ah. I thought that our eyes met once, but I wasn’t sure.”

“How did you come to be there?”

“Fabio told me he wanted to appoint you, so I thought I’d
go and see if you were really as good as they’d told him you were.”

“And how did you know I was going to be in court that day?”

“I didn’t. I’d been going to the courthouse for a few days, walking past the courtrooms and asking people if anyone had seen a lawyer called Guerrieri. Once you passed by just as I was asking someone, and he was going to call you. I had to stop him. Then finally, they told me you were in court that morning, and your trial was just starting. So I went in and sat in on the whole hearing. And I thought you were as good as they said.”

I didn’t think I could hide my childish smugness and so I decided to change the subject.

“Do you mind my asking where your accent comes from?”

Before answering, she opened the window, emptied her glass and took out a cigarette. Did I mind if she smoked? No, I didn’t mind. Which was both true and false.

Her father, as I’d thought, was Japanese, and her mother from Naples. Her name was actually Maria Natsu, but no one had ever called her that. The name Maria only appeared on her papers, she said, and she paused for a few moments, as if this was something important that she’d only just become aware of.

Then she refilled our glasses and told me her story.

How she’d spent her childhood and adolescence partly in Rome, partly in Kyoto. How her parents had died in a road accident, while travelling. How she’d started work as a photographic and catwalk model. How she’d met Paolicelli in Milan.

“Fabio was part-owner of a dress showroom. I was twenty-three when we met. All the girls were crazy about him. I
felt so privileged when he chose me. We got married a year later.”

“What’s the difference in age between you and him?”

“Eleven years.”

“How on earth did you end up in Bari, after Milan?”

“For a few years, Fabio’s work was going really well. Then things changed, I never understood why. I won’t go into details, because it isn’t a very amusing story, but his firm went bankrupt and in a few months we were completely penniless. That’s when we decided to come to Bari, which is Fabio’s home town. He was born here and lived here until he was nineteen. This apartment belonged to his parents and was available. So at least we wouldn’t have to pay rent.”

“Was that when you started working as a chef?”

“Yes. I’d learned to cook when I was young. My father had two restaurants in Rome. When we got to Bari we had to make a new life for ourselves. Fabio became the representative for some designers he’d known in Milan, and I found work at Placebo, where they needed a Japanese chef two evenings a week. Then they started to offer me work organizing dinners and receptions. That’s my main job now. Apart from the restaurant, I’m busy at least eight or nine evenings a month.”

“There’s a lot of money in this city. To organize a reception like the one tonight must seem like a good way to show it off.”

I was about to add that a lot of that money was of dubious provenance, to say the least. But then I remembered that her husband’s money might not be all that legitimate either and I said nothing.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“You live alone, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you always been alone? No wives or girlfriends?”

I made a noise that was meant to be a kind of bitter laugh. As if to say:
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
.

“My wife left me some time ago. Or to be more precise, she told me she was leaving me some time ago.”

“Why?”

“Many excellent reasons.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what these excellent reasons were. She didn’t.

“And what happened after that?”

Yes. What had happened? I tried to tell her, leaving out the parts I hadn’t really understood and the parts that were too painful. There were a lot of those. When I’d finished my story, it was her turn again, and that was how we got onto the subject of her ex-boyfriend Paolo and the game of wishes.

“Paolo was a painter. For some reason you remind me of him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in love with him.” She paused, and for a few moments her eyes seemed to be searching for something that wasn’t in the room. “He found a ... a really beautiful way to tell me he liked me.”

“What was it?”

“The game of coloured wishes. He said a girlfriend had shown it to him, a few years before. But I’m sure he made it up on the spot, just for me.”

She paused again for a few moments, probably remembering other things that she didn’t tell me. Instead she asked me if I wanted to play the game. I said I did, and she explained the rules.

“You make three wishes. You have to say two of them, the third one you can keep secret. For the wishes to come true, they must have a colour.”

I half-closed my eyes and moved my head slightly towards her. Like someone who hasn’t heard, or hasn’t quite understood. “A colour?”

“Yes, it’s one of the rules. The wishes can only come true if they’re in colour.”

For the wishes to come true, they must be in colour. Right. Now I knew why none of the wishes I’d made in my life had come true. There was this rule, and no one had told me.

“Tell me your wishes.”

I can’t usually answer questions about wishes. Either I can’t or don’t want to. Which comes to the same thing.

Confessing your wishes, your real wishes, even to yourself, is dangerous. If they can be realized, which they often can, stating them confronts you with your fear of trying. In other words, with your own cowardice. So you prefer not to think about them, or you tell yourself they’re impossible, and grown-up people don’t wish for impossible things.

That night I replied without hesitation. “When I was a little boy I used to say that I wanted to be a writer.”

“All right. And what colour is that wish?”

“Blue, I’d say.”

“What kind of blue?”

“Blue. I don’t know.”

She made an impatient gesture with her hand, like a schoolmistress dealing with a pupil who’s a bit thick. Then she stood up, left the kitchen and came back a minute later, with a book called
The Great Atlas of Colours
.

“There are two hundred colours here. Now choose your wish.”

She opened the book at the first page of the section on blues. There were lots and lots of little squares with the most incredible shades of blue. Under each one, a name. Some
I’d never heard of, and not knowing the names I hadn’t even seen them. Things don’t exist unless you have names for them, I thought, as I started to leaf through the pages.

Prussian blue, turquoise, slate, dark sky blue, Provençal lavender blue, topaz blue, cold blue, powder blue, baby blue, indigo, French marine, ink, Mediterranean blue, sapphire, royal blue, clear cyan, fleur-de-lys, and many others.

“You mustn’t be approximate, otherwise your wishes won’t come true. Choose the exact colour of your wish.”

It only took me a few more seconds. “The exact colour is indigo,” I said.

She nodded, as if it was the answer she had expected. The right answer.

“Second wish.”

It was getting harder now, but again I didn’t hesitate.

“I’d like to have a child. Right now I’d say that’s a lot more unrealistic than the first wish.”

She looked at me strangely. She didn’t seem surprised, though. It was as if she’d expected that answer, too. “And what colour is it?”

I leafed through the book, then closed it. “Many, many colours.”

This time she didn’t insist on having me say the
exact colour
and didn’t make any comment. I liked the fact that she didn’t make any comment. I liked that naturalness, I liked the way everything seemed right, at that moment.

“The third one.”

“You told me one of the wishes can be a secret.”

“Yes.”

“This is the secret one.”

“All right. But you still have to tell me the colour, even if the wish is secret.”

Right. The wish is secret, not the colour. OK. I took the atlas and opened it at the section on reds.

Wine, crimson, vermillion, powder rose, red rose petal, modern coral, neon red, cerise, terracotta, garnet, flame, ruby, academy red, rust, radicchio, dark red, port.

“Crimson. I’d say crimson. Now it’s your turn.”

“I want Anna Midori to be happy and free. And that wish is leaf green.”

There was something in the way she said it that sent shivers down my spine.

“Then I’d like to know if Fabio is guilty or innocent. If he told me the truth or not. I’d like to know.” She hesitated. “This desire to know is brown, but it changes shade constantly. Sometimes it’s the colour of mahogany, sometimes it’s like leather, or tea, or bitter chocolate. Sometimes it turns almost black.” She looked me straight in the eyes.

“And the third one?”

“My third one’s a secret, too.”

“And what colour is it?”

She didn’t say anything, but leafed through the atlas to the end of the section on reds. My heart started beating slightly faster.

Just then, we heard a prolonged, heart-rending scream. Natsu put down her glass and rushed to her daughter’s room. I ran after her.

Midori was lying on her back, the sheets thrown off, the pillow on the floor. She had stopped screaming and was talking now in a laboured way, in an incomprehensible language, and trembling. Natsu put her hand on the girl’s forehead and told her Mummy was here, but she didn’t stop trembling, didn’t open her eyes, and kept talking.

Not even realizing what I was doing, I took Midori’s hand and said, “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything’s all right.”

It was like magic. The girl opened her eyes, without seeing us. There was a look of astonishment on her face. She trembled one more time, said a few more words in that mysterious language, but calmly now, then closed her eyes again and let out one last sigh, like a sigh of relief. As if the malign force that had made her tremble had been sucked out of her at the touch of my hand. The sound of my voice.

I had caught her as she fell. I had saved her. I was the catcher in the rye.

The line hung there in my head, like a magic formula. I had a hunch as to what had probably happened: the girl had confused me with her father and that had driven away the monsters. Natsu and I looked at each other, and I realized that she was thinking the same thing. I also realized, very clearly and very insistently, that I had rarely in my life had such a feeling of perfect intimacy.

We stayed there, in silence, for a few more minutes, just to be on the safe side. The girl was sleeping now, her face calm, her breathing regular.

Natsu put the pillow back in place and tucked her in. We didn’t talk until we were back in the kitchen.

“I told her her father had to go away on a business trip. A very long trip, abroad, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. I don’t know how, but she knew everything. Maybe she heard me talking on the phone to someone when I thought she was asleep. I don’t know. But one evening we were watching television and there was this scene in a film where policemen followed a robber and arrested him. Without looking at me, Midori asked me if that was how they’d arrested her daddy.”

She broke off. Clearly she didn’t like to tell - or remember - that story. She poured herself another rum. Then she realized she hadn’t asked me if I wanted one. I did, and poured one for myself.

“Obviously I asked her what she was thinking of. Her daddy was away on business, I said. She didn’t believe me, she replied, but that was the last time she asked about it. Since then, maybe two or three nights a week, she’s been having nightmares. The terrible thing about it is that she almost never wakes up. If she woke up I could talk to her, reassure her. But she doesn’t. It’s as if she’s a prisoner in a strange, frightening world. And I can’t enter it, I can’t save her.”

I asked her if she had taken Midori to see a child psychologist. A stupid question, I thought, as soon as I’d asked it. Of course she’d taken her to a psychologist.

“We go once a week. Gradually we’ve managed to get her to tell us her dreams ...”

“Does she dream that they’re coming to get you, too?”

Natsu looked at me in surprise for a few moments. What did I know about what goes on in the head of a six-year-old girl? She nodded weakly.

“The psychologist says it’s going to take a long time. He says it was a mistake not telling her the truth from the start. He says we should be able to tell her eventually that her father is in prison. Unless her father is released before that. We decided to wait for the result of the appeal before making a decision about exactly how and when.”