Fifteen minutes later I faxed the following questions from the main post office in Novara:

  FOR THE ATTENTION OF PRESIDENTE GIULIO ANDREOTTI

  Presidente . . .

  A seven-times prime minister accused of collusion with the mafia? Where did it all begin?

  You are surrounded by a veil of mystery. Did you actively cultivate this?

  Despite all the instability, little ever changes in Italy. Did your long period in office serve more to keep things the same than to improve them?

  What are your favourite songs?

  Shortly before his assassination, Moro described you as ‘cold, impenetrable, devoid of human feelings, given over to the conquest of power in order to do evil’. Yet you attend mass every morning, edit a religious magazine and boast the friendship of popes and cardinals. How important is it for you to feel that you have behaved virtuously?

  Has your wife played an important role in your career?

  What would you say to someone who accused you of having a split personality and what do you understand by the expression ‘lying to oneself?

  You are frequently praised for your flair for compromise, but equally frequently your coalition governments have been compared to dysfunctional families. Did it never occur to you that you were protracting a stalemate out of fear of change? Did you hope to die with the old regime intact?

  It has been said that you have a talent for predicting other people’s behaviour. Assuming you accept that this is true, do you, as a religious man, believe that this belittles them, or is it just the inevitable result of the prevalence of predestination over free will?

  With which character in I promessi sposi do you most easily identify?

  VII

  IT HAD BEEN necessary to re-read I promessi sposi to establish the continuity of an Italian gallery of types, a kinship between the saints and tricksters of the Inferno and the Decameron right through to those of D’Annunzio, Pasolini and even Fellini. Not that any one figure or quality could be considered superlatively Italian, or even as holding the kernel of Italian national character, for one can no more be Italian or English on one’s own, than one could be human, or indeed inhuman, on one’s own, or a son without a mother. But that there was a constellation of types who made each other what they were, who became more and more obviously type figures when seen in relation to each other, and above all in action, in reaction, with and to each other. A sort of Italian dynamic, if you like. A complementary community of minds. A particular way of twining stories together, imagining available spheres of action, and thus of defining each other, of becoming oneself. To establish the existence, I had thought, I had long thought, of such a dynamic, to savour its extension and evolution, its openness to nuance and resistance to change, would be to discover new continents of predictability. To go deeper, in short. That was my goal. Far deeper than my journalism had ever gone. Andreotti was predictable, I thought, in so far as he moved in the world of Italian politics, defined by and defining those around him. Including the corpse on the pavement that decisive spring morning in Palermo. Brought up in Lytham or Lisbon, Andreotti would have behaved entirely differently. I myself would have behaved entirely differently, I felt – no, I was sure – in London or Los Angeles, or with an English wife in Rome. Or a Tibetan wife. In Rome. Thus, in re-reading Manzoni, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to show what perfectly recognisable and even contemporary figures Don Abbondio and Lucia and the Avvocato Azzeccagarbugli and Don Rodrigo are, to name but four, but how they are so in relation to each other. And indeed to many others before and after them, real and imaginary. Destiny is a thing we do together, I thought.

  Such, in any event, was the idea I was seeking support for on reading, re-reading, among a score of other books – it seemed no more than my duty given the task I had set myself – I promessi sposi, when I came across the story of the Nun of Monza – I hadn’t thought of it for years – and above all I came across that chapter opening where Manzoni says: There are moments when the minds of the young are so inclined that any request for a gesture of seeming goodness or sacrifice is met with immediate compliance: like a freshly opened flower the young mind settles softly on its fragile stem, ready to grant its fragrance to the first breeze that blows. Such moments, Manzoni goes on – though I quote, I translate, imprecisely and from memory – such moments, that others ought to wonder at in mute respect, are precisely those the selfish and crafty know to wait for, and seize upon, thus to bind a will that is as yet without defence.

  Why was I overcome by a sense of terror on reading those lines from I promessi sposi? On re-reading the story of Gertrude of Monza’s monstrously manipulative father? I had not tricked my daughter into becoming a nun against her will, thus condemning her to a life of duplicity. I had not manipulated her, or even encouraged her when it came to marrying Giorgio. I had no personal interest in the matter. I had not denied her a dowry. On the contrary, I paid through the nose to set them up. Against my wife’s wishes. And even had I wanted to, I could never have manipulated my son Marco in any way at all, since Marco fell entirely within his mother’s sphere of influence. That was obvious. And jurisdiction. Marco is still entirely attached to his mother’s sphere of influence, I would say to myself as I travelled from one Italian city to another, reporting on this or that scam or tragedy, consolidating what many were beginning to speak of as a very significant career. She controls his whole life. He is hardly my son at all, I would think sometimes, in this hotel or that. It was a time when people were beginning to speak of me as the foremost authority on contemporary Italy. When is he going to grow away from those apron strings? I wondered. I had called home from some party convention only to have Paola tell me that my wife and son were out together. It annoyed me that Marco went so regularly to mass. With his mother. She has seduced him entirely, I thought. I can hardly be proud of his basketball and brilliant maths results, I felt, despite an intense desire to feel otherwise, since he is hardly my boy at all. I don’t even know the rules of basketball. No doubt she speaks ill of me to him, I thought. My maths was always hopeless. A son in every way different from his father, my wife insisted, at her many and amusing dinner parties. Had I spoken ill of her in his presence he would have stuffed his fingers in his ears. He was loyal. It annoyed me to see Marco make the sign of the cross. To see him fall so tamely within his mother’s sphere of influence. He has none of my vision of the world, I thought. I haven’t influenced my son at all. Let alone manipulated him. Yet when I reached the page where Manzoni describes how at the last the Nun of Monza is walled up in a cell for years of living death, I knew it was Marco I was thinking of Marco too is walled up in a cell, I told myself. I can’t remember where I was when I read those pages, when I said those terrible words to myself, but I suspect at home, for the book is too large to carry around comfortably. I promessi sposi is a large book. Marco has been walled up for years, I thought, sitting at home in the house he half-destroyed that night I phoned and phoned from Palermo. His mother’s ancestral stairway sledgehammered to fragments. In a single night. Those pages of Manzoni’s, I remember now, that terrible and terribly Italian story, induced a sense of horror such as I had rarely felt before. It was the image of the beautiful Gertrude hopelessly trapped, walled away irretrievably from all company, that frightened me. It is a frightening image: a beautiful, sensual woman twisted and destroyed in her inmost self, as a result of circumstances at least initially beyond her control. Her youthful dutifulness exploited by a manipulative father, a complicitous mother. Why had Marco turned against his mother? In the story of the Nun of Monza, I thought, there was all the age-old clash of established custom and wayward individual. The way the two call to each other to form a single destiny. National character warps the character, I thought. Though they cannot exist separately. There are no individuals without society. Gertrude bows but rebels. She does her duty, then rebels. Was there a moment when the apron strings became a noose? For Marco. Gertrude takes the veil, against her will, but behind it rebels. She can’t breathe behind the veil. Should I have untied those strings? Could I? But behind a veil you can rebel. She loves, fornicates, kills. She has all the rancour and cunning of somebody rebelling from behind a veil. She would still like to be dutiful, as when her young mind sacrificed itself to her father’s will, bowed like a fresh young plant on its fragile stem, but she is suffocating. All her father wanted was to save himself the dowry, the cost of marriage. The veil is smothering her. She is smothered by her father’s greed. Whereas I was happy to pay for my daughter’s apartment. Destroyed by his disinterest for her most intimate needs. She breaks her vows, loves a man, kills a blackmailer. She is betrayed. She is punished. She is walled up in a cell. He was such a gentle boy, my wife wept at the trial that followed. We had fallen into our routine of moving heaven and earth. I barely had to ask and he obeyed, she sobbed. There were very few people in court. You cannot imagine a more amenable child, she insisted. She was wearing her green jacket, a lipstick almost scarlet, a thick powder over bruises that would not heal. He was always extremely gentle with me, she pleaded. The police had photos of the hole smashed in our bedroom wall, of the broken slabs on the stairway. I didn’t want them repaired. Invited not to press charges, Paola refused. For your sake, Papà, she insisted. For Marco’s sake. He has always been extremely well behaved, I said quietly at the stand, feigning embarrassment at my wife’s emotion the better to confirm her evidence. We’re an unbeatable double-act. No, and I repeat, I said quietly, I know of no incident of any kind such as those recounted by my daughter. We must at all costs avoid a prison institution, Vanoli had warned. The trauma of the prison institution can be decisive, he told us. Marco is walled up, I thought, on reading those pages by the great Manzoni, the appalling story of Gertrude of Monza. Not so much in Villa Serena as in his mind. A story absolutely without relief or catharsis, I thought. This image of a woman walled up, of a woman who accepts to be walled up, she accepts, because still locked into the group vision of her crime and its punishment. She chooses her punishment. Marco was allowed to leave Villa Serena for brief spells under certain conditions. But rarely did so. He was walled up in his mind. As surely as the murderess nun. Smashing his mother’s ancestral home hadn’t helped at all, I thought. What consolation can there be in such a story, I asked myself, turning the pages of Manzoni’s great book? Gertrude was walled up, I thought, from the moment her monstrous father tricked her into taking the veil, manipulated her young woman’s readiness to please, the better to bury her forever, merely to save himself the dowry. Marco was buried forever, I thought. There is a momentum in such things. But it was ludicrous to imagine I was responsible, the way Gertrude’s father clearly had been. Why do I draw such analogies? He imagines I run some international spy ring, I told Vanoli. That I’m all powerful. Apparently that’s why I travel so much. One moment I am moving vast alien armies to destroy him, the next I am his only hope of protection. He claims his mother has killed his pet dog. He never had a dog. Suffocated his pet puppy. I don’t remember any puppies. He claims she pulled the animal under her dress and suffocated the thing. Every time a different story. All my travelling has to do with the way I control world climate, I laughed nervously. I bring his mother children to eat. Or Paola is his guardian angel. His saviour sister. Though it was she who accused him. He has seen her giving blow-jobs at Stazione Termini.

  Vanoli was in a hurry that afternoon. I was speaking quickly, reading as instructed from notes I had taken on our first or second trip to Villa Serena. After the trial. Our long drives north. Marco was really beyond Vanoli’s care now, after the trial, the move to Villa Serena, but I still went to see the man. He smiled. These were precisely the kind of things a schizophrenic did say, he said. And hardly remarkable. That was what schizophrenia was, he said. But I knew that. I must just go on calmly repeating the truth, he said, the true story. That we were his parents who loved him and wanted him to get well and come home.

  Just keep repeating the truth, Vanoli said, calmly and above all consistently. Just keep reminding him how the world really is. And check that he takes his medicine. At least we’ve managed to avoid the prison institution, Italy’s foremost psychiatrist said. Villa Serena is a civilised place. Something of a miracle actually, given the evidence your daughter gave. And he is taking his medicine again. Obviously there were things I hadn’t been informed of, Vanoli said. Your wife put on a remarkable performance though. He was clearly impressed. There are few people my wife cannot impress. Or seduce for that matter. She had had her hair freshly permed for the occasion. Her glorious hair. Many of my patients have made dramatic improvements at Villa Serena, he said. Dottor Busi is an excellent psychiatrist. But on returning home from Vanoli’s office on the Lungotevere and re-reading the story of the Nun of Monza, I was overwhelmed. That was not the truth at all, I thought. I didn’t want you home at all, I tell my son now, sitting here beside his body. That was a lie. I wanted your mother to myself. At last. I wanted you out of the way. Our lives are separate now, Karen had said. I have decided to stop travelling, I told my wife. At last. It had taken two years for those words to sink in. I am giving up journalism, I told my wife. I’m needed in the family, I said. I want to be with you. How flat and dead Karen’s voice was when she spoke those words. I never had the stairs repaired. I shall write a book, I decided: national character and the essential predictability of human behaviour. But on re-reading the story of the Nun of Monza, walled up for ever in her cell, I was appalled.

  Why had I started thinking of this, remembering this – I promessi sposi, the Nun of Monza – those few precious minutes in the camera ardente before being so cruelly interrupted? Was it the candles? The religious iconography? The thought of a body about to be walled up? Was it my tricky question for Andreotti? What will he answer? Or just a general and absolutely absurd feeling of guilt? An absurd and masochistic bandhu. Linking myself and Gertrude’s monstrously manipulative father. A connection that didn’t connect. Paranoia, no less. Marco is less remarkable in death than in life: that was my first thought on being shown into the camera ardente, those few minutes before being so cruelly interrupted. I was surprised and I suppose relieved to find my wife not there. Very surprised. I took a seat. To my immense relief he was dressed. The corpse was dressed. My wife wasn’t there. Dark trousers, blue sweater. Villa Serena must have sent his clothes, I thought. How kind. The nurses had dressed his body, hidden his wounds. How generous. Sitting down I was surprised and moved by this generosity. They had dressed the boy after the post-mortem. There were candles at the head and feet. It was the camera ardente, not the mortuary. There were two or three heavy pieces of dark wooden furniture and a Sacred Heart on the near wall. A public space that apes the private, I thought, or the imagined private of a distant past. That saves you taking your late beloved home to lie under halogen light by the television. A more meaningful past of coffin-like chests and sideboards with Sacred Hearts. But in an under-funded public hospital. I sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair with red upholstery. Our parents’ past. I sat down. Or their parents’. It was definitely Marco. Definitely his face. He was laid in a sort of shallow coffin whose darkly polished wood matched the other furniture glimmering in the candlelight. There was a crucifix, a Sacred Heart. These objects conjure an illusion of meaning, I remarked. Less remarkable in death than life, I thought. Less wild. More like the dutiful Marco who knelt beside his mother every Sunday at mass. How that irritated me! Not her religion, which I respect, even envy, but his docile mimicry. The diligent Marco who walked forward to take the host at his grandmother’s funeral, while Paola sat behind in the pews with me. Aren’t you going up to take the host? I asked my daughter. It was her grandmother’s funeral after all. She held my hand and sat in the pew while the others went forward. I remember her face being especially foreign that day, especially set about the lips in the dim light. Was it this religious iconography, in the camera ardente, that reminded me of the Nun of Monza? Of Gertrude’s monstrously manipulative father, her terrible destiny of being walled up, as Marco quite definitely had been walled away in his mind and now is beyond all walls.