Reasonable Doubts Read Free

too. You just had to walk along the Via Sparano, in the vicinity of the church of San Ferdinando - an area considered a black zone - carrying the wrong newspaper or the wrong book, or even wearing the wrong clothes, and you ran the risk of beating beaten up.
    And that’s what happened to me.
    I was fourteen and always wore a green anorak that I was very proud of. One afternoon I was strolling in the middle of town with two of my friends - the three of us little more than children - when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded. They were only sixteen, seventeen, but to us they were men. At that age two years’ difference is a lifetime.
    One of them was a tall, thin, fair-haired guy, with a face like David Bowie. He wore Ray-Bans, even though it was already dark. When he smiled, through thin lips, my blood ran cold.

    A short, very sturdy-looking guy with a broken incisor approached me and told me I was a Red bastard and I should take off that fucking anorak immediately, or they might think of giving me what I deserved: the castor oil treatment.
    In the mindless terror of that moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Until then I’d never heard of the Fascist custom of pouring castor oil down their opponents’ throats.
    My friend Roberto peed himself. And I don’t mean metaphorically. I saw the liquid stain spread over his discoloured jeans. In a thin voice, I asked why I had to take off my anorak. The short guy slapped me very hard between my cheek and my ear.
    “Take it off, comrade .”
    I was terrified and felt like crying, but I didn’t take off my anorak. Trying desperately to hold back my tears, I again asked why. The guy slapped me again, then punched me, then kicked me, then punched and slapped me some more. People passing by looked away.
    I was on the ground, curled up to protect myself from the blows, when someone made them run away.
    What happened next is clearer and more vivid in my memory.
    A man helps me to my feet and asks me in a strong local accent if I want to go to casualty. I say no, I want to go home. I have my house keys, I add, as if he’d be interested, or as if it meant anything to him.
    I walk away, and my friends aren’t there any more, and I don’t know when they disappeared. On the way home, I start crying. Not so much because of the pain I’m still feeling, but because of the humiliation and the fear. Few things leave such a strong impression as humiliation and fear.
    Fucking Fascists.

    And as I cry, and blow my nose, I say to myself out loud that despite everything I didn’t take off my anorak. This thought makes me stiffen my spine and stop crying. I didn’t take off my anorak, you fucking Fascists. And I remember your faces.
    One day I’ll get my own back on you.

    When Paolicelli entered the lawyers’ room, it all came back to me, in a rush. Like a sudden violent gust of wind that throws the windows wide open, causes the doors to slam, and scatters papers.
    He held out his hand, and I hesitated for a moment before shaking it. I wondered if he noticed. Memories - vague things, noises, boys’ voices, girls’ voices, smells, cries of fear, songs by Inti-Illimani, the face of someone whose name I couldn’t remember and who’d died of an overdose in the school toilets at the age of seventeen - crowded into my head like creatures suddenly released from a spell that has been keeping them prisoner in the basements or the attics of memory.
    It was obvious he didn’t remember me.
    I waited a few moments, in order not to be too abrupt, before asking him why he had appointed me and why he was inside.
    “They arrested me a year and a half ago for cross-border drug trafficking. I opted for the fast-track procedure in court and was given sixteen years, plus a fine so huge I can’t even remember what it was.”
    You deserved it, you Fascist. You’re paying the price now for all the things you did then.

    “I was on my way back from a holiday in Montenegro. At the harbour in Bari