Antonella Parise emerged from the funicular railway at the end of the line high atop the hill. With her tall, lithe figure, her agile step, her red hair tied back in a ponytail, she stood out in the crowd that flowed through the chilly morning air toward the various destinations of their workdays.
Romano and Aragona emerged from the shadows and came to a halt right in her path.
The woman pretended not to recognize them and tried to sidestep them, but Aragona darted quickly in front of her, barring her way.
“Buongiorno, Signora. We certainly seem to be in a hurry this morning. Wouldn’t you have a moment to join us in an espresso?”
Parise snapped, angrily, “You have no right to go on pestering me. If you won’t stop, I’ll file a complaint with your superiors. Neither I nor my family have done a thing deserving of such—”
“And we’ll be the first to present our apologies directly to your husband,” Romano interrupted her, “since he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what people think of him at your daughter’s school. In fact, you know what? Let’s go see him right away.”
The woman said nothing, her green eyes leveled at the policeman’s face. Then she turned and strode off toward the café near the funicular stop.
When they had sat down at the little café table and placed their order for three espressos, the woman hissed: “Why can’t you understand? There’s nothing at all to find out. Nothing to investigate, nothing to discover. My daughter . . . she’s raving, she’s dreaming, she’s fantasizing, but she just writes down her dreams. And that’s all.”
“You see, Signora,” said Aragona, removing his glasses, “you don’t have to convince us of it. We know that Martina made it all up.”
“What? I mean, in that case, you . . . then, if so, why did you come up here? I need to get to work, I can’t—”
Romano said, in a low voice: “So, aren’t you interested in knowing how we came to this conclusion? Because I can imagine that you understand that the crime of which your daughter has accused her father is one of the foulest and most odious crimes known, a very grim matter that the law generally delves into without pity, bringing in psychologists and magistrates. These are long and painful procedures, and they can ruin a person’s life. Or even many people’s lives.”
Antonella sat there silently, slowly shaking her head as if rejecting out of hand even the mere hypothesis of what Romano had just foreshadowed. A tear rolled down one cheek, and she wiped it away with a brusque gesture of one hand.
“No, I’m not interested in hearing how you figured it out. The only thing I’m interested in is having you leave me alone, and more importantly, having you leave my husband alone. He’s a good person, and the last thing he deserves—”
Aragona let loose with a crude burst of laughter.
“Once again, we’re completely in agreement, my dear Signora. Your husband is a good person, and this is the last thing he deserves. There are lots of things he doesn’t deserve. Don’t you agree?”
Romano was pretty sure that his partner had just been unnecessarily crude, and intentionally so, but he didn’t feel he had the right to scold him for taking that minor satisfaction.
“We aren’t interested in entering into the details of your relations,” he said. “Luckily for us, that’s none of our business. What does concern us, however, is the fact that your daughter is spreading the idea among the people who know you as a family that her father is molesting her. We need to understand why, in order to reassure people who might someday decide it’s worth submitting a formal criminal complaint. So, either you talk to us, or else we’ll have to talk directly to your husband.”
For a few seconds, Antonella Parise sat there, motionless, inexpressive. Then the dam burst, and the woman opened her heart to Romano and Aragona as if they were a pair of father confessors, not a couple of cops.
My husband doesn’t make much money. It’s not like he doesn’t make much in any absolute terms, I realize there are people who get by on far less and maybe even have more children. I’ve often thought that perhaps that was our mistake: if we’d had more than one child, the kids might have had their heads screwed on a little straighter.
Martina, you know, is intelligent. Really intelligent. And clever, too. She’s always been a sharp kid, much more so than other girls her age. She knows how to manipulate people to get them to do what she wants; she has the gift of guessing other people’s weak points and using them to her own advantage. I know, it’s not very nice for a mother to talk this way about her own daughter, but it’s the truth.
The parents do their best, but it’s just that sometimes they don’t realize that what they think is their best really isn’t. For instance, we wanted the girl to attend an elite school, alongside the children of distinguished professionals and industrialists. We thought that by doing that we’d give her a path to enter fine society, and perhaps, in time, to meet someone who could emancipate her from her mediocre status.
We were wrong.
We were wrong, because the only thing we achieved was to instill in her a sense of inadequacy. She learned to act a certain way, instead of being something specific. And she developed a sense of envy.
My daughter envied her girlfriends or, actually, her classmates, from the first day of school on. She envied them their shoes, their jackets, their backpacks, their chauffeur-driven cars that dropped them off at school, the homes to which she was invited for parties. Since she couldn’t rival the other girls in terms of clothing or social circles, she decided to become their leader. And she succeeded.
She started hating her father three years ago. She blamed him for what he couldn’t afford to buy for her. And in the end she couldn’t think of anything better to say than that Sergio is a miserable loser, unable to provide us with what we deserve. She didn’t take it out on me because I’m pretty so, in her opinion, I just need to find a wealthy boyfriend and make her rich too. Her father, on the other hand, is nothing but a ball and chain, a hindrance.
In a certain sense, it was she who pushed me into the arms of Pasquale, the owner of the shop where I work. Our relationship began before he hired me; we met in the waiting room at the dentist’s office where I took Martina. She calls him Uncle Lino, short for Pasqualino. He buys her fake affection and, more importantly, her silence, by giving her gifts, and in exchange, she offers him an opportunity to . . . well, it seems to me that you already understand that part.
Are you wondering if I feel dirty for what I’ve done? Yes, I feel dirty. But not for the reasons you’re probably imagining.
My husband knows about my relationship. About six months ago, Martina told him about it, hoping that that would drive him away. She thinks that if we can just get rid of Sergio, Pasquale would leave his wife and all three of us could live together in happy luxury. That, of course, is not what would happen. It’s one thing to hand a young girl a hundred euros so that you can fuck her mother without being disturbed or inconvenienced, it’s quite another matter to destroy your life. What’s more, everything’s in his wife’s name, and he’d be left without a penny to his name.
I tried to explain it to my daughter, but she’s convinced that if we play our cards right, it’ll all turn out for the best. The only obstacle as far as she can see is Sergio. When she tried to tell him, he started yelling that he didn’t believe it and that he wouldn’t believe it even if he saw it with his own eyes. He didn’t even ask me to quit my job, because in that case we would have to retrench drastically: sell the car, move house . . . And things would just be worse. Better to turn away and pretend nothing’s happened.
Martina’s latest fixation is this thing with sexual molestation. So you’re not willing to leave? she decided. Then I’ll get them to come take you away. I’ll get you arrested. She got the idea from a TV show in which the father is hit with a restraining order keeping him from coming within a mile of his children. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
I no longer love my husband, let’s be clear about that. We were just kids when I got pregnant with Martina. But that doesn’t mean I’d dream of accusing him of that kind of filthy crime, not in my wildest dreams. I’d rather just go on living like this, at this point, I can’t turn back time.
I know I can’t.
Romano and Aragona sat there in silence, their eyes fastened to the woman’s face.
They stood up, went over to the cash register and paid for their espressos, and left the café with an oppressive sense of anguish that they hadn’t had when they’d gone in.
There was just one last thing to do, before they could consider the matter settled.