The Fugitive

Europa Editions
214 West 29th St., Suite 1003
New York NY 10001
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www.europaeditions.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 1994 by Edizioni E/O
First publication 2007 by Europa Editions
Translation by Anthony Shugaar
Original Title:
Il fuggiasco
Translation copyright © 2007 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609451738

Massimo Carlotto

THE FUGITIVE

Translated from the Italian
by Anthony Shugaar

To Silvia Baraldini

The verses at the beginning of the first chapter are taken from the drama
Nessuno
(“No One”), by Luciano Nattino and Antonio Catalano, of the Alfieri Theater Company in Asti. The verses at the beginning of each of the other chapters are taken from songs by Stefano Maria Ricatti (from the CD
Blu
—Rossodisera Records), a Venetian singer and songwriter, and a long-time friend of mine. I am especially fond of his recordings, which kept me company through countless sleepless nights. More generally, I would like to express my appreciation to the many artists who, over the years, gave me their support, friendship, and solidarity.

I have an awkward past. It took me five large wooden crates to set my past aside and finally think of the future. In a full week of painstaking work, I filed away two hundred and twelve pounds of documents—court records, thousands of letters and telegrams, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, dozens of videotapes of Italian TV programs—from
Telefono giallo
and
Portobello
to
Mixer
and
Il coraggio di vivere
. Those five crates are now stored in my cellar. They are an archive of the last eighteen years of my life. Nearly half of my life.

I am a notorious legal case, the “Carlotto case.” When someone happens to recognize me on the street, on a train, on a plane, they exclaim: “Hey, you're the Carlotto case!” I hold the dubious distinction of being the longest and most drawn-out case in the history of Italian justice, as well as the most controversial. Moreover, I am studied in universities as a “worst case.” A unique case, never to be repeated. No Italian citizen will ever be able to wend his or her way through the same judicial labyrinth. It is now technically impossible.

And that makes me a human interest story. An extremely rare instance of systematic and relentless persecution by fate itself. Fate, in all its swindling cynicism. Though I doubt jinxes are contagious, I felt it was only fair to the reader to offer complete disclosure concerning this crucial aspect of my story, so you can make an impartial and fully informed decision whether or not to go on reading.

Everything imaginable happened to me between January 20, 1976, when I walked into a Carabinieri station to report a murder, and April 7, 1993, the day the President of the Italian Republic decided to put an end to my case with an official pardon.

I spent six years in prison, I was put through eleven different trials in the highest and lowest courts of the Italian judicial system (all the way up to Italy's supreme Constitutional Court, and at every level along the way), with the involvement of eighty-six magistrates and fifty court-appointed experts. I came very close to dying of a disease I contracted in prison.

The various courts that tried me expressed a remarkably varied array of opinions concerning my innocence or guilt, and while they were at it, those opinions lavished vitriol on the other judges. The last court to try me had the last word, and in its view I was very, but very guilty. In their written opinion, the judges stated that “with this judgment of conviction, the Court wishes to make the ‘Carlotto case' a worthy episode in Italian judicial history.” A bizarre assessment of my case, shared by only a few others who see my story as a shining example of judicial protection of my civil rights, given the astonishing number of verdicts. The more trials, the greater the sheer quantity of justice.

Not so. I differ with the court, of course, since I have always considered myself very, but very innocent, but I also believe there is an unbridgeable gap between reality and the way justice is administered. That argument remains relevant and is frequently and vigorously debated, while I wait for the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to decide who is ultimately right.

This autobiographical account is not, in any case, about the trial; it tells the story of how the undersigned experienced for a number of years the direct consequence of that trial—life on the run—and the role that it played in the last few months of his battle with the law. I wrote this book without taking myself too seriously, much as I have always tried to do over the years. It has been my self-defense against the sleep of reason and the distractability of providence. For eighteen long years, I refrained from talking about myself, lest I add elements of confusion to the battle being waged in court. I stuck to a strategy that emphasized the judicial sphere over the human dimension, in order to preserve my case as part of the heritage of all those who believe in a “just justice” (as people used to say).

I believe this was the right choice, and ultimately a successful one. Leaving aside my personal defeat in judicial terms, my case forced the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court, and the supreme Constitutional Court, to hand down two important and enlightened verdicts that finally make trials subject to review. In more general terms, my case contributed to the larger debate about the miscarriage of justice but also about sentencing, prisons as an institution, and the health issue of diseases caused by incarceration.

 

Very little has been written about life on the run, and what little has been written focuses chiefly on the world of organized crime. Organized, of course, among other things, to arrange for the escape of its criminal acolytes. This book, in contrast, intends to describe the daily life, the behavior, and the routine of someone who is on the run due to a convergence of random factors. A very specific type of fugitive, who poses no danger to others; who wants only to survive and avoid capture, day after day.

What were you dreaming

when you left your home

head down

legs in the air

falling into the void

open-mouthed?

 

 

My life on the run from the law came to an end one day in January of 1985, when Melvin Cervera Sanchez, a young, well-born lawyer with great expectations, decided to put an end to our professional relationship by selling me to the Federales.

He was my
coyote
. In Mexico, if you want to obtain any kind of official document (even documents that you have every right to request, say, for instance, because you are Mexican), it is necessary to use the services of one of these gentlemen, called
coyotes
for their widely acknowledged human decency and professional rectitude; in exchange for money, a coyote will solve whatever problems you may be having with the state bureaucracy. You should not confuse the
coyote
with the
pollero
, another figure of great national stature. The
pollero
arranges for illegal entry into the Estados Unidos. The
pollero
charges more than the
coyote;
he demands all of his clients' possessions in exchange for his services, and then packs them into broken-down trucks. Nine times out of ten, he then abandons them in the middle of the desert (on the Mexican side of the border, of course), or else near border crossings patrolled by American border agents, who have been warned in advance, because the
pollero
loves to be paid in dollars.

I decided to turn to a
coyote
because I was fed up with traveling around the world on tourist visas. I wanted to settle in one place and achieve the dream of every fugitive from the law: to be reborn, with a different identity, and start a new life.

Love had brought me to Mexico. That is, my girlfriend at the time, Alessandra, disliked all the countries I had lived in prior to Mexico. Alessandra lived in Italy and from time to time she would visit me, staying just long enough to decide that she didn't like the place and that she would never—never!—live there. Ours was a great and passionate love. It ended the day I was arrested, and I never saw her again after that. I recently learned that she married a salesman and now lives in a small village named Mattarello, in the region of Trentino. Maybe that explains why she never wanted to live in cities like Paris, Barcelona, and Lisbon.

I decided to try Mexico after reading Victor Serge's
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
. Serge had been a militant anarchist in France before living through the October Revolution as a Bolshevik. He was subsequently swept up in Stalin's purges and, after a lengthy stay in Siberia, he finally made his way to the land of the unfinished revolution.

Alessandra really loved the book. I wasn't as enthusiastic, but I was still fascinated by the description of this country, a place filled with sunshine, tequila, tortillas, and
revolución
. I will confess that winding up in Mexico City, with its population of twenty-one million, its pollution, constantly threatening immediate evacuation of the city, and the total careening lunacy of an out-of-control megalopolis—it is in fact roundly considered to be one of the most unlivable cities on earth—slightly dampened my initial enthusiasm.

Melvin Cervera Sanchez seemed like the right person for the job. He was the brother-in-law of a prominent left-wing intellectual who had taken my case to heart. He had all the social and professional attributes to help me become a Mexican. My intellectual friend introduced us at a party. The following day, in his law office, Melvin outlined his plan of action to me and presented me with a bill for his services. A staggering sum. I assumed that paying in advance was just a quaint local custom. I also considered for a moment the possibility that he might be planning to screw me, but I immediately ruled it out because, in Italy, if someone is caught helping you in any way, shape, or form to acquire Italian citizenship illegally, the consequences can be quite serious. Relatives included. Anyway, I assumed he would never cause me problems because of my friendship with his brother-in-law. That was my clinching argument for relying on Melvin. But things in Mexico seem to work differently.

Melvin's plan was brilliant. He was going to bring back to life the son—who had died an untimely death—of an Italian emigrant couple. The certificate of civil status of this latter-day Lazarus would make its way from one bureaucratic agency to another, progressively acquiring the trappings of an honorable discharge from military service and other such documents, until the reborn son was finally registered to vote. I was so excited about the various details of the plan that when Melvin insisted on accompanying me back to my apartment, I wasn't suspicious in the least. That night, I dropped off to sleep for the first time without any worries about what the next day would bring. But my awakening couldn't have been ruder. Strange men with gassed-back hair and dark sunglasses swarmed into my bedroom, armed and short-tempered.

What astonished me, more than the simple fact of the betrayal, was their belief that I was a terrorist and a member of the Red Brigades. To inflate the price for turning me over, that well-known kidder, Melvin Cervera Sanchez, had warned the Federales that I was a dangerous fugitive and Red Brigades militant. When it dawned on me what a horrible turn matters could take, I was so frightened that I told the police my real name. In a nightmarish twist of fate, my name was practically the same as that of an Italian Red Brigades terrorist who was wanted in Mexico for the murder of two policemen.