Romano broke the silence, teeth clenched: “You did the right thing by reporting this to us.”
He now felt a burning sense of guilt, after having read the passages from Martina Parise’s essays that were marked out in red. He hadn’t believed that story when he’d first listened to it at the police station, he still hadn’t believed in it when Palma had ordered him to check it out, he’d continued not to believe it when Professoressa Macchiaroli had accompanied him and Aragona to see the principal, leading them through the hallways of the building like a couple of troublesome pupils.
But now he thought that the caution both women had displayed was, if anything, excessive; that they ought to have intervened earlier. He also felt great pity for the young girl, whom he imagined to be reluctant to accuse her father, perhaps terrified at the thought of how he would react. And by extension, he felt within him a powerful, dark rage toward a father who had dared to place his lustful hands on his own God-given child.
Aragona, too, was churning with impatience. He’d already forgotten his firmly held opinion that the matter was a complete waste of department time and energy. To say nothing of his disagreement with Palma, now a thing of the past. Now what mattered most to him was projecting an image of himself as a tireless and determined guardian of the law, and making a strong impression, if possible, upon the school principal whose lovely legs were, alas, concealed beneath her desk.
Heading straight toward Principal Trani, he removed his blue-tinted glasses with the notorious, contrived gesture he’d stolen from a policeman he’d watched on television.
“Wouldn’t it be best, at this point, to push a little harder with the mother? I mean, I get it, you have to be careful not to ruin the family harmony and all that, but it seems to me that what’s written in that essay is pretty unequivocal.”
The woman disagreed.
“Yes, we know that. But if the young woman refuses to confirm the things she wrote in that essay, if she continues to insist that she simply made them up, what do we do then? We are educators, we’re supposed to oversee our students’ learning experience, not pry into what’s happening with their families. We’ve found ourselves faced with a case that tests our consciences so we decided to turn to the experts.”
At the sound of the word “expert,” Aragona sat up straight in his chair and dropped his tone of voice by a good solid octave.
“And you did the right thing, my dear Signora. I believe that the best thing to do now is to talk to the girl again.”
Principal Trani’s face lit up with gratitude.
“We were hoping you would say that. But I wouldn’t tell Martina who you really are, she’d curl up like a porcupine and we wouldn’t be able to get another word out of her. We could introduce you as a pair of administrative investigators from the school board: you heard about these essays and you asked to talk with her.”
Romano was baffled, and he would gladly have throttled the life out of Aragona.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You see, Signora, there are specialists who are trained to draw a great deal of information out of a conversation with an adolescent. I think it might be best to inform the family court and have a lady psychologist who’s in regular rotation on this sort of issue assigned to the case. We don’t have any of the professional skills required to—”
The principal exchanged a worried glance with the schoolteacher and interrupted him.
“No, no, I’m not going to let that happen! We’ve already had experience with that sort of approach, in other situations involving . . . pathological issues, shall we say, and the outcome was by no means what we’d hoped for. The students refused to talk, and your specialists came up with nothing. So they decided there was nothing they could do, and matters were left just as they’d been found. The students were worse off than when we started. If you have no intention of proceeding, so to speak, without headlights, then we thank you for your time and interest but, in that case, we’d rather take Parise’s last answer at face value and accept that she just made it all up.”
Aragona coughed gently and gave Romano a sidelong glance.
“Well, maybe we could give it a try anyway. Let’s talk to the girl and try to figure out whether or not it’s work proceeding with the mother. Doing nothing at all after what I just read goes against my instincts.”
Romano felt as if he were surrounded. He had a moment’s hesitation, then said: “All right, let’s talk to her. But I continue to think that it might be better to turn to a genuine professional in this sector.”
Principal Trani got to her feet, clearly relieved.
“It’ll only take a few minutes: it’s just a matter of finding the key to bring out the truth. And maybe it’ll turn out that she made up the whole thing. Emilia, if you’d be so kind, go call the girl.”
Once the schoolteacher had left the room, silence fell. Romano felt uneasy: the situation had taken an anomalous twist. He’d never been the sort of officer who was a stickler for standard procedure, but this time he felt that it might be best to stick to the rules. All the same, he couldn’t allow that young girl to be subjected to certain indignities, if indeed that was what was happening. Aragona, for his part, had already made up his mind that the molestation was a reality, and his romantic notion of the heroic policeman meant that it was up to the two of them to solve the case then and there, not turn it over to some ineffectual bureaucrat who’d let the culprit off the hook, just because of some trivial quibble.
Not five minutes later, they heard a light knocking at the door. Professoressa Macchiaroli entered. Behind her was Martina Parise.
She was slender and attractive, of average height for her age, rather well dressed in a sweater and a pair of jeans which Aragona’s eagle eye immediately pegged as bearing an expensive trademark. Her features were pleasing and her smooth chestnut hair hung to her shoulders. She didn’t seem a bit surprised to see the two men sitting in the principal’s office. Her large hazel eyes darkened momentarily. She bit her lower lip, but her face turned expressionless again almost instantly.
The principal was the first to speak: “Ciao, Martina. We asked you here because these gentlemen have read your esssays and wanted to ask you a question or two. You see, they work in a . . . supervisory office, and from time to time they happen to read things written by the very best students.”
Romano caught the ball at the first bounce.
“That’s right, Martina. Congratulations, you’re quite the writer, those are some first-class essays. Listen, the part about your family, the situations you write about—”
The girl interrupted him with great determination.
“I just make up the character I write about. I explained it to my teacher and to the principal, too. That’s not really my family, at all.”
Her tone had been decisive and conclusive. Romano, who had no familiarity with adolescents, fumbled, unsure of what to say next. Unexpectedly, Aragona came swooping in to the rescue.
“Exactly, that’s just what we wanted to talk to you about, because your character, the girl who’s narrating the story, is great. We like her. Do you think we could use her in a TV series? What do you think?”
Everyone turned to look at the young police officer, in stunned surprise. Romano struggled to remain seated. Martina bit her lip again, curious in spite of herself.
“A TV series? For real?”
The policeman nodded, removing his blue-tinted eyeglasses with his usual sweeping gesture. Not even in the presence of a twelve-year-old girl did he know how to restrain himself.
“Certainly. It’s a gripping, profound character, and it tells us a great deal about the malaise afflicting young people today. For instance, and this is what my partner wants to know, what’s going on in the family? Can you tell us about it?”
Martina shot a fleeting glance at Professoressa Macchiaroli, who nodded encouragingly.
“She’s . . . she’s a young woman about my age, who attends a school a lot like this one. She would be fine, she’d be happy, if only . . . in other words . . . ”
Aragona, by now fully inhabiting his part, perfect follower of the Stanislavski method that he was, pressed her.
“Could you finish your sentence: If only what? Because you surely understand that, from the point of view of television production, what counts is the drama, the challenges facing the protagonist. What does she lack, in order to achieve happiness?”
“She lacks . . . her father. Or actually, no, she doesn’t lack him, she has a father. Unfortunately. Because her father bothers her. Her father is a horrible man.”
Romano tried to delve deeper into the concept: “That is, your father . . . her father doesn’t love her?”
Martina turned to look at him. Her pupils seemed to dilate.
“No, he loves her. He loves her a little too much, honestly.”
“What do you mean, too much?”
Martina’s eyes welled over with tears. Her voice dropped until Romano had to make a real effort to hear what she was saying: “He gets in bed next to her, at night. He caresses her, but not the way a father ought to do with a daughter. He touches her. And sometimes he wants her to touch him back.”
She seemed even younger than her age to Romano. After a long minute of silence, Aragona said: “And does she want someone to help her? Is she hoping, I don’t know, for a hero to come to her rescue, to rescue her from . . . from this situation?”
Martina murmured: “Yes. She really wishes that could happen.”
Romano nodded. Then he exchanged a glance of understanding with the principal, who smiled at the young woman: “All right, Martina. Thank you. You can go back to class now, Professoressa Macchiaroli will accompany you.”
Once they were alone, Aragona said: “It all seems very clear to me. What do we do now?”
Romano looked into the empty air. After a moment’s reflection, he looked at Principal Trani and said: “Let’s talk to the mother.”