Maria Teresa knocked at my door, put her head round it, and told me Signora Kawabata was here.
“Who?”
She came in, closed the door, and said that Signora Kawabata had come about the Paolicelli case.
“But Kawabata is a Japanese name.”
“I guess so. She looks Japanese, anyway.”
“And what has she got to do with Paolicelli?”
“Quite a lot, she’s his wife. She says she has copies of the documents.”
When she came in, I recognized her immediately.
She said good afternoon, shook hands with me, and sat down in front of the desk without taking off her coat or even undoing it. I could smell perfume, essence of amber, with a hint of something more pungent that I couldn’t quite identify. Close up, she looked a bit older and even more beautiful than she had a few days before in the courtroom.
“I’m Fabio Paolicelli’s wife. I’ve brought you all the papers relating to the trial and the sentence.”
Bizarrely, she had a slight Neapolitan accent. She emptied her bag, placed a bundle of photocopies on the desk and asked me if we could talk for a few minutes. Of course we could talk. That’s what I’m paid for, after all.
“I need to know if there’s any hope for Fabio’s appeal, and if so how much.”
She’d come straight to the point. The right thing to do, from her point of view. But I couldn’t come straight to the point, and not only because I wanted to sound professional.
“It’s impossible to say right now. I have to read all the papers on the case, including the original ruling.”
And I also have to decide if I’m going to take on the case. But I didn’t say that.
“Fabio told you what this is all about.”
I was getting impatient. Did she expect me to form an opinion on the basis of what the defendant had told me in prison?
“He told me the gist of it, but as I was saying…”
“I don’t suppose there’s much hope of an acquittal, even on appeal. But I’ve been told it may be possible to plea-bargain. Fabio could get as little as six or seven years. In three or four years he could be allowed home visits… or perhaps… what is it called?”
“It’s called day release.”
I found her tone a bit irritating. I don’t generally like clients – or worse still, the relatives of clients – who’ve swotted up on the law and tell you what you can and can’t do.
“You see, signora”-I hated the self-important tone in my own voice as soon as I opened my mouth – “as I was saying, I have to study all the papers before I can express a sound opinion. To think of alternatives, including plea-bargaining, I really need to have a clearer idea of the case. There may be procedural or technical questions that a lay person might be unaware of.”
In other words, I’m the lawyer here. You stick to flower arranging, or the tea ceremony, or whatever. And I haven’t even decided yet if I’m going to defend your husband – who’s a Fascist thug and probably also a drug trafficker – because I’ve had a score to settle with him and his friends for thirty years.
Those were the very words I had in my mind. I didn’t even realize that I’d moved quickly from being sure I’d refuse the case to being undecided about whether or not I’d accept it.
She grimaced, which only made her look even more beautiful.
It had been a lawyer’s answer, and she didn’t like it. She wanted me to calm her fears in some way. Even if it meant telling her there was no alternative to plea-bargaining. People want many things from a lawyer, but what they want more than anything is for him to take away the anguish of having to deal with policemen, prosecutors, judges and court proceedings. With all the apparatus of what’s called justice. They want the lawyer to take away the anguish of thinking.
“Going on what your husband told me, this isn’t an easy case. If things happened in the exact terms” – exact terms? Why the hell was I talking this way? – “in which he told them to me, then this isn’t going to be an easy appeal. In fact, it’s going to be very hard, which means that plea-bargaining is definitely a possibility we’d have to consider seriously. On the other hand…”
“On the other hand?”
“Your husband says he’s innocent. Obviously, if he’s innocent, the idea of plea-bargaining and ending up with seven or eight years, even supposing we could get it down as much as that, is a bit hard to take. Even if there is the prospect of home visits and day release.”
She hadn’t been expecting that answer. She realized that she had kept her coat on and she unbuttoned it nervously, as if she suddenly felt hot or stifled. I asked her if she wanted to take it off and give it to me to hang up. She said no, thanks. But then she took it off and placed it over her legs.
“Do you really think he might be innocent?”
There. I’d asked for it.
“Look, Signora Paolicelli, I really can’t answer that question. In most cases we lawyers don’t know the truth. We don’t know if our client is guilty or innocent. In many ways it’s better not to know, it’s easier to defend the client in a professional way…”
“You don’t believe his story, do you?”
I took a deep breath, resisting the impulse to talk more bullshit. “I’ll be able to get a clearer idea after I’ve read the papers. But I must admit, your husband’s story is very hard to believe.”
“I don’t know if his story is true either. I don’t know if he’s been telling me the truth, even though he swears that the drugs weren’t his. He’s sworn it to me over and over. Sometimes I believe him, and sometimes I think he’s denying everything because he’s ashamed and doesn’t want to admit he was carrying drugs in the same car as me and our daughter.”
That’s what I think too. It’s the likeliest hypothesis, and it’s probably true.
I told myself these things as I looked at her in silence, my face devoid of expression. And as I looked at her I realized something.
It wasn’t true that she had doubts about her husband’s innocence. She was convinced her husband was guilty, and that, more than anything else, had been her curse since the whole affair had started.
“Fabio told me you’d have to read the file first before you decided whether or not to accept the case. Do you mind if I ask why? Does it mean that if you’re convinced he’s guilty you won’t defend him?”
That was a question I really needed. No, I don’t give a damn whether he’s guilty or not. I defend guilty people every day. It’s just that your husband-I don’t know if he ever told you this – has a past as a criminal and maybe a murderer, or at least an accomplice to murder. I say this from personal knowledge, I hope I’m making myself clear. Given all this, I don’t know if I’m capable of defending him properly.
I didn’t say that.
I told her that this was the way I worked. I had to examine the papers first. I didn’t like to take on a case sight unseen. It was a lie, but one I couldn’t help telling.
“When will you let me know if you accept?”
“It isn’t a very big file. I could look at it over the weekend and give you my answer on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.”
She took a large man’s-style wallet out of her handbag. “Fabio told me you didn’t want an advance before deciding whether to accept or not. But you’re going to read the file, and that’s work, so…”
I raised my open hands and shook my head. I didn’t want any money for the moment. Thanks all the same, but this was the way I worked. She didn’t insist. Instead of taking money or a cheque from the wallet she took a business card and handed it to me.
Natsu Kawabata, Japanese Cuisine, it said. Beneath that, two telephone numbers, one home and one mobile. I looked up from the card, questioningly.
She told me she was a chef. Three evenings a week she worked in a restaurant – she mentioned the name of a fashionable spot – but she also made sushi, sashimi and tempura for private parties thrown by people who could afford it. Japanese food has never come cheap.
The words escaped me before I could stop them. “I’d have said you were a model or something like that, not a chef.” I regretted saying it before I’d even finished the sentence. I felt like a complete idiot.
But she smiled. It was only the hint of a smile, but it was very beautiful.
“I used to be a model.” The smile disappeared. “That was how I met Fabio, in Milan. It seems like a long time ago, so many things have changed.”
She left the sentence hanging in the air, and in the brief silence that followed I tried to imagine how their relationship had begun, why they’d moved from Milan to Bari. Other things, too.
She was the one who broke the silence and interrupted my thoughts. “But I like cooking more. Are you familiar with Japanese cuisine?”
I said yes, I was very familiar with it and liked it a lot.
In that case, she said, I ought to try her version of it some time.
It was the kind of thing you say to be polite, I thought.
But a shiver went through me, the kind you feel when you’re sixteen and the prettiest girl in the class suddenly, amazingly, stops and talks to you in the school corridor.
Natsu asked me to call her as soon as I’d read the papers and had decided what to do.
She left, and it occurred to me that she hadn’t said a word about having come to court and watched me at work. I wondered why, and couldn’t find an answer.
A slight scent of amber lingered in the air. With that hint of something more pungent that I couldn’t quite identify.