He felt, rather than saw, the gun in his hands. This was no dream, but a vivid memory, with the power to tear apart whatever he was doing at that moment. Once it came over him, it was all there was. And here it was again.
How could an actual memory break into a dream? He was sure this only happened to him. And when it did, he had to sit down or lean against something. Calm down, let the images run their course, wait for them to stop. That’s what he did this time too, perching on the edge of the mattress. He could hear soft snoring from the bed above him. He’d given his place to the latest arrival – almost begged him to take it.
He breathed and waited in the darkness.
It started with touch, then moved to sight. Everything was clear in his memory, even though the day was dark and the main colour, grey. He felt the rough stock of the Tokarev TT-33, a Yugoslavian pistol with nine rounds.
Gazing down the barrel of the gun, he saw a man holding two children by the hand, a boy and a girl. He stared at them, knowing full well what was about to happen. He wasn’t afraid – not for himself anyway. Looking around, he saw trees, flowerbeds, a crowded street, the road ahead and cars stuck in traffic on this 10 winter’s morning. The chaos, crowds, and people – none of this had ever stopped them. But the children were new. They’d chosen to strike before the man dropped them off at school. Why? Wouldn’t it have been better after? That was the one detail he couldn’t see clearly. Maybe because it belonged to the previous days.
He looked at the gun again. Nothing was happening. Everything was on hold. It was all down to him. He was supposed to open fire. He was the leader. In the meantime, the man pushed the girl a few metres away and she looked shocked, almost hurt by his sudden behaviour. He couldn’t move the boy, who held on to his hand with improbable strength, sticking stubbornly at his side. That’s why he hesitated. He gripped the Tokarev, which was just waiting for his orders: loyal, reliable, a weapon that had never let him down.
The gun sat still in his hand while he watched the boy, who wouldn’t let go of his father’s. He felt something sharp – a knife in his guts – at the scene. It wasn’t just fear in the boy’s eyes: there was something deeper, something that went beyond familial affection. This was more than a lifeline chucked to a dinghy from a rescue boat during a storm. But even if it hadn’t been, he asked himself: is there anyone I could throw a rope to? He didn’t care about the man or the boy. It wasn’t pity or emotion he was feeling. He only cared about that question, so violent it stopped him in his tracks.
His thoughts were drowned out by a gunshot. He turned to his accomplice, who had just opened fire and he grimaced as if to say: what are we doing here with our guns in the middle of the road, while people are screaming and fleeing, and somebody’s called the police? So he started shooting too, on auto-pilot: one, two, three times. The man, at first hit only in the arm, now collapsed to the ground, dragging the boy with him. The boy started sobbing, but he was unharmed, considering that he was still clinging to his 11 bullet-riddled dad and covered in his blood. The accomplice was moving in to finish the man off, when sirens started blaring close by. He turned back with a nasty grin. ‘He’s croaked.’
He looked at the boy once more, before someone pulled him away.
A few minutes later, when they’d driven some way from the shooting, the other man growled: ‘The fuck were you thinkin’, eh, Pino?’ That Neapolitan accent grated on him like nothing else in the world.
He didn’t reply. He was thinking, like he would nearly every day for the next thirty years, of the small hand gripping the larger one, of the tie that bound them together. Something powerful, something absolute. Something he would start feeling himself only many years later, during his life’s second act, on the final downhill slope.
Dedication. Loyalty.
There: that’s what it was. Having someone you’d never let go of, someone you’d hold on to tightly. Someone who was special.
Dedication. Loyalty.
For thirty years, that memory had knocked him sideways each time he mentally reran the details. (He added nothing, omitted nothing: if he wanted, he’d have been the perfect witness.)
Yet even though it kept coming back, the memory no longer troubled him.
He’d found the answers he’d been looking for. He could finally make that phone call.12