The Case of Lisandra P. (6 page)

“Come back down to earth, Vittorio! I'm your lawyer, aren't I? You have to trust me. Stop thinking as if you were a free man, and try to think the way the investigators do. The question now is very simple— ‘their' question is very simple: ‘Who might have killed her without raping her?' A lot of people, obviously. But who else? Who more than anyone? ‘The husband,' of course. It's logical, the husband would not take by force something he could have whenever he wanted. And then, a husband who kills his wife, in principle, doesn't really desire her anymore. The results of the autopsy perfectly corroborate their suspicions. The noose is tightening around you. They have no proof, but according to their reasoning, everything is proof. The minute anything changes in their assumptions it points to you. Get a grip, Vittorio; again, come back down to earth.”

“I'll never get out of it. If they'd found my sperm on Lisandra, they would have concluded that just because someone just made love to his wife doesn't mean he didn't kill her. I can hear them already, coming out with a new version of the facts, which, once again, will incriminate me, because it's the only story they want to write, a story where I'm the guilty one, I'm the murderer. They've almost managed to make me sorry Lisandra wasn't raped, that there was no trace of someone else's sperm on her; that at least would have
put my mind at rest; no, that's not what I mean, but I would have been exonerated, automatically ex-on-er-ated. I've even reached a point where I imagine wanting to kill Lisandra and wanting to tell them how I would have gone about it—I would never have pushed my wife out the window . . . I might have poisoned her . . . or God knows what, I would have rigged some car accident . . . In any case, I would have fixed it so that my alibi was rock solid . . . I would never have been found at the crime scene, acting silly and stupid like that . . . I'm more clever than that, I would have made things disappear so it would look like a burglary . . . but in any case, I wouldn't have let myself be caught red-handed . . .”

“Stop right there, Vittorio, you are talking about murder with malice aforethought, and they're talking about an unpremeditated murder. Which leaves the door wide open to madness, clumsiness, a lack of caution, and which in turn often leads to obvious and indefensible guilt, and that's what they're accusing you of: unpremeditated murder. Nothing more, nothing less. An argument that turned ugly. Why didn't you tell me you'd had an argument with your wife that evening?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Unless your neighbor's deposition was a pack of lies? This is the last time I'll ask you: why didn't you tell me you'd had an argument with your wife that night?”

“I didn't think it was important.”

“You didn't think it was important? That you had an argument with your wife the night she died? You have two options: either you tell me what really happened that evening between you and your wife, or else I'll tell you the way I see it—you'll have to get a new lawyer, you'd be better off. Personally, I don't like wasting my time.”

“Can't you imagine the way I feel? My life with Lisandra
ended in an argument. My guilt at having walked out like that. It's unbearable, so yes, the less I think about the argument, the better I feel.”

“Except that now you are going to have to think about it. You don't choose your next-door neighbors.”

“That bitch . . . It's no surprise, coming from her. It must have been her hour of glory, with real policemen, and a real dead body, what a nice change from ordinary little crimes, like who let their garbage cans leak in the stairway, or whose stroller is always in the way in the hall on the third floor, so this time, a dead body, she must have put all her energy into it; she's a nasty piece of work, with spiteful anger to spare, a witness who can only be for the prosecution—all she knows is how to stir up shit, and she invents that shit so it will correspond to her own twisted view of life. So what did she say? What could she have heard, that harpy, with her ear glued to the wall?”

“Don't turn the question around; it's your version of the facts I want: one more time, Vittorio, why did you argue with your wife?”

“Over some trifle.”

“If you want my opinion, the investigators will not be satisfied with that answer.”

“I hadn't noticed that she was wearing a new dress, I didn't notice anything anymore, I didn't look at her anymore, I didn't love her anymore—that's why we argued, will that do you?”

“Is it true?”

“That I hadn't noticed she was wearing a new dress, yes, but the rest, no, of course not.”

“And is that why you went to the movies? To get away from the argument?”

“No, I was already about to leave when Lisandra began criticizing me.”

“The neighbor said you argued a lot.”

“But my neighbor does nothing all day but look for signs that other people's lives are as miserable as her own. What do you want me to say? That woman is poison. I always used to laugh at her malicious gossip. I would never have imagined that one day it would be turned against me. She's hysterical, and there are millions of gossips like her on the planet. Every time Lisandra and I made love, that crazy bitch would start banging on the wall; it was as if she were following us around the apartment, moving around her place according to how we moved around ours; she would bang and bang again; it was as if she wanted to kill us for loving each other, but she didn't tell them that, of course she didn't, because it would have proven that we loved each other—although the investigators would have rushed to point out that plenty of people make love even when they don't love each other.”

“Actually, you're wrong there; she did talk about it, but that was not exactly her version of the facts.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. She said that at least your constant arguing spared her from—and I'm quoting here—‘your inappropriate cries of love,' your ‘shouting like rutting animals,' and that all things considered she actually preferred your arguments—they weren't as obscene. She said that over the last few months your shouting had been nothing less than cries of hatred, and that there were no other cries of any kind that might have pointed to some sort of reconciliation, but of course she could never have imagined it might all lead to a crime. She thought you were just the umpteenth couple who, having exhausted the pleasure they could find in each other's bodies, had ended up hating each other, and were tearing each other apart with their mutual lack of desire. ‘After the cries of the body, the cries of the weary soul,' that is
exactly what she said, and I can tell you that her deposition had an impact on the investigators.”

“Vicious tongues can be quite poetic.”

“The problem arises when they are convincing.”

“But just because you have an argument with your wife doesn't mean you go and kill her. It's true that we had been arguing quite a lot lately; she was irritable and I was preoccupied, or the other way around; you never know who's at fault at times like that, you just hope that this argument will be the last one and that the happy days will return—but you must know about all that; I hear about arguments like this every day in my office, and even nastier ones; believe me, every couple goes through them.”

“I know. But when one member of the couple is found dead, the argument no longer belongs to the basic nature of a love story. It becomes incriminating evidence.”

“Except that I did not kill Lisandra, the way those maniacs are insinuating—but what else did my dear neighbor hear that night? I hope that they asked her, at least?”

“Of course.”

“Well?”

“Nothing. Her deposition is categorical. She says she didn't hear a thing after your argument, other than the loud music. She says that's all she heard, loud music.”

“I don't believe it.”

Eva Maria looks at Vittorio. Vittorio takes his head between his hands.

“That's the bad news for the day. You can see why I'm a nervous wreck. Don't look at me like that, Eva Maria.”

“And what if it was your neighbor who killed Lisandra? That would explain why she wasn't raped; one woman can't rape another.”

A sad smile crosses Vittorio's face.

“You, at least, are on my side. Unfortunately, we can't go jumping on everyone as if they were all potential murderers, and the investigators did do their job: she had an alibi, she was with her daughter. And, no, don't tell me it could be her and her daughter. You have to face facts; my lawyer was right, everything is conspiring against me, one thing after another, irrefutably: the circumstances, the timing, and now the results of the autopsy, and the testimonies. At night I wake up in a sweat, I feel as if I'm caught in a storm forever raging; everything is in disarray . . . And the worst thing of all is Lisandra's funeral . . .”

“What do you mean, Lisandra's funeral?”

“It's tomorrow. And they don't want me to attend. ‘Legally, you do not have the right to be present.' Do you realize how far they're prepared to go? How can this be, not allowed to attend my own
wife's funeral? She didn't make a will. She will be given the ‘ordinary treatment' applied in these cases, a ‘standard' mass, and I have no say in the matter, no right to ask for anything, not a song, not a text, not a prayer; there's nothing I can do—they are treating me like a dangerous criminal who will use Lisandra's funeral as an opportunity to escape. And the only thing they'll allow is a bouquet of flowers. They have agreed to leave a bouquet of lilies for me; those were her favorite flowers—I always gave her some on the anniversary of the day we met.”

“What's wrong, Vittorio? Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, I'm fine. I'm just exhausted, that's all. The chief of police hates me; he took an instant dislike to me; it's as if he were making a personal matter out of it—do you know what he said? That the day my name was cleared all I had to do was dig up my wife and have a new funeral more to my liking, but now for the time being, as things stood I'd do better to concentrate on my defense. No matter how I pleaded with him, and told him I would agree to go under escort, he just laughed and said, ‘Be reasonable, we're not going to let a suspect attend the funeral of the woman he is supposed to have killed,' and he told me that for a psychoanalyst I was singularly lacking in common sense, although that didn't surprise him—all psychoanalysts lacked common sense.”

Eva Maria got there first. Now she looks at the lilies on the steps. She chose the color herself. White. That is how she sees Lisandra, or perhaps Death. There are not many people. People must not have known; they would have had to read the newspaper. There is another bouquet of lilies. Red ones. Vittorio's bouquet. Or so Eva Maria supposes. That is his idea of Lisandra, or perhaps of their love. The color he gave her every year on the anniversary of the day they met. Vittorio does not know that Eva Maria is here. One adjective springs to mind.
Unusual
. A court-appointed church. A court-appointed priest. Police standing guard at the entrance, in their car with tinted windows. Eva Maria got there first. She sat at the back. She watched each of the mourners as they came in. People don't enjoy funerals the way they enjoy weddings. There is no talk of outfits, or hats, or how beautiful some of the women look, or how others have such bad taste. There is no commenting on the guests, other than deep inside. And anyway, there are no guests, just those who want to be here, those who know about it. Eva Maria tries, from their attitude, to determine what ties might have connected each of them to the dead woman. Some faces are openly sad, others impenetrable. She can tell which ones are Lisandra's parents, all the way at the front, weeping. But the others? Friends?
Other patients, like herself? The neighbor? Here the neighbor must not be bothered much by shouts, maybe just the odd rumor. Vicious tongues always find a way to wag. Eva Maria looks at all these bodies gathered here, all these bodies that have finished growing up. She thinks, Childhood is sorely missing at funerals. Eva Maria feels like an outsider. Anyone is allowed to join a funeral procession, and that is precisely why she is there. Perhaps the murderer is there, too, hiding among friends and family, come to attend the ultimate consequence of his act. A madman. An invisible deus ex machina. Eva Maria watches as they all file past the coffin. She wishes a red light would come on above the murderer's head. An elderly couple lingers for a long while, holding hands. They are beautiful. Might they be Vittorio's parents? Eva Maria wonders if she would have grown old at her husband's side if Stella had not died. Their daughter's disappearance brought with it the disappearance of their love, with terrible simultaneity, where her love was concerned, in any case. Eva Maria looks at the “court-appointed” coffin. How comfortable it seems to her, reassuring, compared to the nowhere to which her daughter was consigned. Stella. The bodies of the dead are subdued, made orderly, made-up, a part of humanity restored to them before they are removed from it forever. Her daughter, on the other hand, had remained behind, in the inhuman posture in which death had captured her. As always, Eva Maria's thoughts turn to those who were caught by lava, the men and women and children, the dog pulling on its leash after its masters had fled. All trapped in midgesture, living statues, with lava for a sarcophagus. Water was Stella's sarcophagus. A liquid sarcophagus, gently rocking her, perhaps, but not bringing her back. Eva Maria closes her eyes at the thought that her daughter's eyes are still open, somewhere at the bottom of the Rio de la Plata. And the image becomes even more vivid with her eyes closed—she
opens them again, quickly. Her tears fall. Eva Maria is one of those who usurp sorrow at funerals. Who do not weep for the dead body there in front of them, but for the death it reminds them of, or the death it makes them fear. She wanted so badly to bury her daughter. She wonders what Vittorio is picturing at this moment, locked away in his cell. Lisandra lying there between four wooden boards. He can't picture anything. He doesn't even know how she is dressed. Who chose her clothes? Surely her parents. Eva Maria is not the only one who is thinking about Vittorio. Everyone is thinking about him. There is even an empty place in the first row, close to the coffin. As if everyone were waiting for him show up. The awkwardness in the church is palpable, perhaps even more palpable than sorrow. As if the person most entitled to mourn were missing, Vittorio, the tearful husband, the presumed killer. Everything is backward. The funeral of a dead woman is one thing, but of a murdered woman, that's something else entirely. The sorrow of not knowing how she died, this woman they are burying: it impedes mourning, and nothing should ever impede mourning, or there can be no healing. Can anyone here imagine Vittorio pushing his wife out the window? Is anyone here absolutely convinced he did? Eva Maria got there first, and she will be the first to leave. The policemen are waiting. Talking. Laughing. Eva Maria hides behind a tree. She watches as people leave the church. You don't take photos at funerals. Her camera sounds like the song of a sick bird. She doesn't want to miss anyone. Eva Maria is beginning to have a taste for suspicion, the stifling sensation that anyone could have killed Stella. She meant to say Lisandra. She's confusing them. Mixing things up. In her mind now the two dead women are overlapping. The one who makes her suffer so much that she cannot bear to think of her, and the one who did not suffer, who occupies her thoughts for hours on end. And the beggar at the entrance
asking for money, the beggar to whom she gave a few coins in exchange for a promise to tell all the women wearing gloves that they are beautiful. You never know, if Alicia is there, she will go away happy, comforted, perhaps reconciled. And what if it was him? That beggar, the madman, the invisible deus ex machina, come to mingle with the procession. Eva Maria wants a red light to go on above his head. The camera hanging from her neck oppresses her. With her hand she squeezes the bark of the tree, tight. Too tight. A few drops fall on her shoes. Red. Her blood dripping. Pain cannot be eased as long as anger reigns.