She talked of her day. She’d left home the previous morning, then driven, with Stefano at the wheel, to the airport. She’d taken the flight north, then the shuttle bus from Milan to Novara. Forty-five minutes with her brother, Domenico, the widower of Annunziata, not a minute more and not a minute less, because the restrictions on visits to prisoners held under Article 41bis were sacrosanct. She had spoken to him through a wall of reinforced glass, communicating via microphone and earpiece. His voice, she reported, was metallic and thin. He seemed to have lost his defiance.
Bernardo thought that Giulietta, had she not been his daughter, might have gone to the university across the mountains, at Reggio. She could have become a poet. He couldn’t remember when he had last read a book. She had a way with words. There was a statue in Locri, close to the shoreline, dedicated to the memory of Nosside, the girl poet of the Greek settlers in the city, three centuries before the birth of Christ. It would have been pleasing if Giulietta had been able to utilise her talent with words . . . His daughter’s ability to master the family’s investments, though, was more important to him. And she was good at choosing the men who would carry out that work on their behalf. She was indispensable to him.
She told him about her visit to Novara in graphic detail. It was rooted in the old tradition of the ’Ndrangheta: men should serve time in gaol and come out stronger, with greater authority; they should not weaken. It was easier when the gaol was down the road, across the peninsula, to the south of Reggio. In the gaol at San Pietro, a padrino could live well. Paulo de Stefano had had the ‘suite’ there and had lived almost in luxury, until Article 41bis had been introduced. The accursed Sicilians, with their campaigns of assassination and bombings, had provoked the state and Article 41bis – isolation and slow, rotting decline – had been the response. Giulietta answered the question without him asking it: their son had not asked after him or Mamma. Domenico had spoken of his children and his eyes had filled with tears when he had talked about his dead wife, disappeared. There had been mention of the food and the exercise he was allowed. Giulietta would not have said that her brother had spoken well of them if he had not. She told no lies to please.
He slept most nights in the bunker because of Article 41bis. A few, not many, could continue to control their family’s affairs from one of the gaols with segregated blocks; they used codes based on books, and the visitors would carry back a message of which book and which page, then describe how the words should be pulled out so that the instructions could be interpreted. Bernardo would have been among the many – as were Domenico, and Rocco. From the bunker, Bernardo could exercise a degree of power, but not from a prison cell. Soon, he would no longer have to sleep in the bunker. He had been told so. Mamma brought him some coffee. The clerk in the Palace of Justice had said that the prosecutor searching for him was under pressure to reduce the resources used in the investigation. Bernardo did not know what resources had been deployed, but it seemed they were nearly exhausted.
He was quiet when Giulietta had finished.
She had returned late from her journey. The round trip would have been in excess of 2,500 kilometres. She went once a month to see both of her brothers. In the summer, when it was warm, she could take Mamma with her, or Teresa. Otherwise she went on her own – it would have been too tiring for Mamma and too tedious for Teresa, who had the two sets of children to care for.
Bernardo imagined himself in a cell: the hours became days, the days weeks, the weeks faded to months, and hope failed . . . It would have been like that for the child in the cave, with the chain on her ankle, in the dark, while they negotiated the ransom.
Mamma was back in the kitchen. He coughed.
Which of them would come to visit him? Each evening Stefano was given a plastic bag with the stubs of the cigars Bernardo had smoked during the day and the ash. He would take them to the incinerator. Windows were always open in the house, and Mamma usually had a cigarette burning in the kitchen. It was the care of small details that kept men free. Who would come?
He clapped his hands, and the sound bounced off the walls. Marcantonio would be home late that night. He cleansed his mind of the image of the cell where Domenico was held, the image of the child and the sound of her frail voice. The picture in his mind of the prosecutor, from the Cronaca, had gone. He thought of his grandson and the pleasure the boy had given him.
He might hear that day, or the next, that a turncoat had died from a bullet wound. He felt good, and would feel even better when the family was gathered, the investigation was scaled down and his own bed beckoned. He slapped the table and the coffee cup jumped. A little spilled but he felt safer. He clapped loudly again and the sound bounced off the walls. He was secure.
Most people ignored them. They were on the Via Nazionale Pentimele, the main road cutting through Archi, satellite of Reggio Calabria. Consolata was on the pavement closest to the sea, and Massimo had the side that was near to the main railway line. They might not have been there for all the attention they attracted.