Temporary Perfections Read Free Page B

into a dramatic foreshadowing of things that are anything but rarefied, and frequently frightening.
    The advocate general called for the dismissal of my appeal. He spoke briefly, but it was evident that he had studied the facts of the case, which isn’t always true. He made a strong argument against the basis of my appeal, and I thought that if I had been one of the justices, I would have found him persuasive and I would have ruled against the appellant.
    Then the chief justice addressed me, saying, “Counselor, the panel of judges has read your appeal as well as your brief. Your point of view has been set forth quite clearly. Therefore, in oral argument, I’d ask you to stick to the fundamental aspects of the law or to matters that were not treated in the appeal or the brief.”
    Very courteous and very clear. Please be quick, refrain from repeating the things we already know, and above all, don’t waste the court’s time.
    “Thank you, sir. I’ll try to be concise.”
    I was quite concise. I went back over the reasons why I believed those wiretaps should be excluded as evidence, andthe verdict should be overturned, and in a little more than five minutes, I was done. The chief justice thanked me for having kept my promise to be brief, courteously told me I was free to go, and called the next case. The decision would be announced that afternoon. In the Court of Cassation, the judges hear oral arguments for all the appeals first, and then they retire for deliberations. They emerge, sometimes quite late in the day, and read all the decisions, one after the other. Usually, they read them to an empty courtroom because no one wants to wait for hours and hours in the hallways, surrounded by unsettling marble statues, amidst the echo of lost footsteps. For lawyers, especially those like me who are only in town for the day, this is how it works: You ask one of the clerks to inform you of the decision in your case, and you hand him a folded sheet of paper with your cell phone number written on it, folded around a twenty Euro bill.
    Then you leave the court building, and from that moment on, every time your cell phone rings, your stomach lurches, because it might be the clerk, calling to inform you of the verdict in a chilly, bureaucratic tone.
    It happened while I was in the airport; the plane was already boarding, and I was about to turn off my phone.
    “Counselor Guerrieri?”
    “Yes?”
    “The court’s verdict on your appeal is in. The appeal was denied, court costs to be paid by the appellant. Good evening.”
    “Good evening,” I said, though only my cell phone heard me—the clerk had already hung up, and was already phoning someone else to dispense his own personal verdict for a (modest) fee.

    On the plane, I tried to read, but couldn’t. I thought about having to tell my client that in just a few days he would be walking into a prison and staying there for many years. The prospect of that conversation put me in a grim mood of sadness mixed with a brooding sense of humiliation.
    I know. He was a drug dealer, a criminal, and if they hadn’t caught him, he might have gone on selling drugs and profiting from them. But in the years between his arrest and the verdict, he’d become another person. It struck me as intolerable that the past should just leap up, in the form of a cruel, clear-cut verdict, and wreak havoc like that.
    I thought it was a travesty for this to happen so many years after the fact, and it seemed even more senseless because there was no one to blame.
    With these thoughts racing through my mind, I dropped off into a troubled sleep. When I opened my eyes again, the lights of the city were looming close.

4.
    When I got home I called my client and did my best to ignore the heavy silence that slowly solidified between us, once I’d given him the news. I tried to ignore the human life that was being torn to pieces in that silence. I hung up and thought that I was getting too old for this kind of