Involuntary Witness Read Online Free Page B

the lift, but this wasn’t a great problem and nobody noticed anyway.
    I passed almost unscathed through the Christmas holidays, even if one day, perhaps the 29th or 30th, I saw Sara in the street in the middle of town. She was with a woman friend and a man I had never seen. He could well have been the friend’s fiancé, or her uncle, or a gay as far as I knew. All the same, I was convinced at once that he was Sara’s new boyfriend.
    We waved to each other from opposite pavements. I went on another step or so and then realized that I was holding my breath. My diaphragm was obstructed. I felt something, something hot, rising up in me to
spread across my whole face, into the roots of my hair. My mind was a blank for several minutes.
    I had trouble breathing for the rest of the day and got no sleep that night.
    Then even that passed.
    After the Christmas holidays I started working again, at least a little. I recognized the catastrophe that was threatening my practice and above all my unsuspecting clients and, ploddingly, I attempted to regain a modicum of control over the situation.
    I began once more to prepare for trials, began to listen – a little – to what my clients were saying, I began to listen to what my secretary was saying.
    Slowly, in jerks, like a worn-out jalopy, my life began to get moving again.

Part Two

7
    It was a February afternoon, but it wasn’t cold. It had never been cold, that winter.
    I passed the bar downstairs from the office but didn’t go in. I was ashamed to ask for a decaffeinated coffee, so I went to a dismal bar five blocks away.
    Ever since I’d started suffering from insomnia I didn’t drink proper coffee in the afternoon. I had tried barley coffee a few times, but it really was too disgusting. But decaffeinated coffee seemed like real. The main thing is not to be seen ordering it.
    I had always looked with a certain condescension on people who ordered the decaffeinated stuff. I didn’t want the same sort of looks to be cast at me now. At least, not by people I knew. I therefore avoided my usual bar in the afternoons.
    I drank the coffee, lit a Marlboro and smoked it seated at an ancient Formica-topped table. Then back five blocks and up to the office.
    As far as I could remember, it was due to be a rather quiet afternoon: only one appointment. With Signora Cassano, due for trial the next day for maltreating her husband.
    According to the indictment, this gentleman had for years come home from work to hear himself called, at the best, a shitty down-and-out failure. For years he had been forced to hand over his wages, allowed to keep only some loose change for cigarettes and other personal expenses. For years he had been humiliated
at family gatherings and before his few friends. On numerous occasions he had been slapped about and she had even spat in his face.
    One day he could stand it no longer. He had plucked up the courage to leave home and had denounced her, asking for a separation and damages.
    She had chosen me to represent her, and that afternoon I was expecting her for us to settle the details of the defence.
    When I got to the office Maria Teresa told me that the harridan had not yet arrived. On the other hand a black woman had been waiting for me for at least half an hour. She didn’t have an appointment but – she said – the matter was very important. As always.
    She was in the waiting room. I peered through the crack in the door and saw an imposing young woman, with a face both beautiful and austere. She can’t have been over thirty.
    I told Maria Teresa to show her into my room in two minutes’ time. I took off my jacket, reached my desk, lit a cigarette, and the woman entered.
    She waited for me to ask her to take a seat and in an almost accentless voice said, “Thank you, Avvocato.” With foreign clients I was always in doubt as to whether to use tu or lei . Many of them do not understand the lei form, and the conversation becomes surreal.
    From the way this