by Toti O’Brien
There
is death, and there is untimely death. They are different. Twenty years after
your passing I still wonder about the appropriateness of your early call. About
its legitimacy. I think of these two decades apparently stolen from you—an
expanse of days, weeks, months, inexorably attached, marching forward without
hesitation. They did not stop and wait to see if you’d catch up, when you
slipped off board. No. Time didn’t look back.
I do.
When I glance behind my shoulder I see an intricate, colorful landscape you
might have enjoyed exploring . . . I wonder why you weren’t given a chance. Is
there any ratio to life’s diverse spans? Any reason beyond erratic sentencing?
Any justice?
During
your last summer, you became obsessed with the murder of a college student. I
knew about it but I didn’t pay attention. I was too preoccupied by your illness,
though I didn’t imagine how imminent the end was. Cancer was galloping, causing
parts of you to break down in rapid succession. I was painfully aware my
massage couldn’t soothe the aches in your disintegrating bones. Still, every day
we went through the motions. You quietly complained. I massaged, then I asked
if you felt better. A little, you said. You didn’t lie very well.
Once,
you asked me to give you a ride into town. Too weak, you couldn’t drive any
more. But you needed a better radio in order to follow the news. Something your
arm could hold up to your ear, in spite of its weariness. Something powerful,
for you to capture each word.
I was
consternated by how fast your hearing had gone, by the fact you could no more enjoy
music. But you had zero interest in music, or anything else. You only cared
about that murder on campus, in our town’s oldest and most famous university.
You were listening non-stop, eager for the next update.
Curiosity wasn’t like you. Had my mind been in
its normal state, I would have caught the incongruity. You could have been found
with a book of poetry in hand—or art history—a good novel, perhaps—rather than the
daily paper. Politics and crime had never been on your menu. But that summer I
remember you muttering to yourself: “This is very important. Extremely. I need
to understand.”
Could
the reason of your fascination have been not the crime (and the impenetrable
mystery surrounding it) but the setting? You were a college professor. And you
deemed your role precious, essential, almost sacred. Your devotion towards your
students surpassed routine obligations. Now, while the news unfolded, it
appeared as if faculty was involved. A department director was charged with
obstructing the inquiry. Two teaching assistants would soon become the defendants.
There
was more. Your daughters were about to start college. Did you worry about them?
Were you aware you might be leaving them soon?
She
was twenty-two. The shot was so sudden, so silent, her friend thought Marta had
simply passed out. She had dropped to the ground like a rag doll, like a string-less
puppet. Then her girlfriend saw the small hole concealed by her thin blond hair.
She started screaming. A passerby called for an ambulance. People rushed out
from the adjacent building, hosting classrooms and offices of the school of Jurisprudence.
The campus police arrived promptly. Marta was transported to a nearby polyclinic,
where she died five days later. In fact, she was dead already, at least
cerebrally. She never awoke from the coma into which she had instantaneously
fallen.
Her
life came to an arrest a bit before noon, sun reaching the zenith, in a hallway
trapped between massive buildings hosting some of the most praised academia of
our town—including the Law Library. Marta was a law student herself, and a good
one at that.
A few
steps and she would have entered the main plaza where Minerva stood—the
university navel, hub, meeting point, main landmark—the statue of Athena, symbol
of human wisdom and knowledge.
Truth
about Marta’s murder was never found.
*
But this you don’t know. When you died at
the end of November—seven months after the bullet was shot—the authorities were
still in the dark about the murder of Marta. And I wonder if their speculations
(in absence of tangible proofs) kept you occupied during the confinement of
many hospital beds. Could you have guessed the case would remain unsolved?
Could you have resigned to the gratuitousness of a severed life? I don’t know.
You were a splendid researcher. One whose patience defied all frustration. One
of those who dig until they find water, or gold.
In
spite of your inclination for humanities, you had been trained as an engineer. Unreflectively,
you had followed your father’s directions. Young and docile, you had complied
out of discipline and meekness. Then you had bitterly regretted your choice,
yet developed excellent skills, specializing in earthquake prevention. You had
taught for decades in the Architecture department of the college where Marta
was killed. Your students adored you.
Still,
when mid-life crisis hit you, you gave your career a brisk turn. You pursued a
totally different path, switching to the study of old monuments and ancient towns.
You spent months questioning ruins until you understood how they were originally
built, in order to remake their whole structure from the inside. A work of keen
observation, fine detection, rigorous deduction. The new discipline you created
for yourself, then scholarly formalized—founding an original school of thought—befitted
you. You felt realized, fulfilled by your labor. Rapidly, your goals shifted from
restoration to vulnerability. You focused on preventing the loss of
architectural heritage—especially if belonging to endangered cultures.
On
your deathbed, you oscillated between awareness of the end and plans for the
future. “It is very important,” you said—your eyes bright, animated. “Extremely.”
You were talking of a book you wanted to write, one you had drafted already.
About vulnerability.
You
must have read, of course, about the projectile. You might have seen pictures
of the CAT scan. There is something haunting about how lead was split in eleven
fragments, each acting like a tiny separate bomb. Like an earthquake,
simultaneously and irreparably damaging many areas of the victim’s brain.
Private Hiroshima. The shell, never found, became one of many controversial
elements of the case. It should have fallen in the street, unless it were shot from
far within the building, in which case it could have been recovered and then disposed
of. But the inquiry firmly settled on a window partly obstructed by an air-conditioner.
Thus, the shooter’s arm must have been stretched out to bypass the obstacle, and
the shell must have necessarily dropped to the pavement. Like the gun, it was
never located.
Firearms
were discovered on campus—a variety of them. Some real, some modified toy guns.
Some hidden and rusted, some in perfect shape. Some with shells trapped within.
Indiscretions of improvised shooting parties—for fun, after work, in various
facilities—reached the press. But the gun killing Marta wasn’t identified.
The
projectile might have exploded in small lethal shards, multiplying its
destructive potential, because it was handcrafted, belonging to the amateurish
arsenal the police was bringing to light. But homemade or manufactured is
irrelevant. Brains are vulnerable anyway.
Was
the intriguing fauna of weapons—sprouting like mushrooms at the core of
academia—preoccupying you? I wouldn’t be surprised, but I didn’t ask. I was
worried about you.
Were
you instead fascinated with the calculations—based on painstaking simulations, drawings,
reconstructions—meant to determine the trajectory of the bullet, thus defining
its probable point of origins? Everything conjured against credible results.
Because Marta was hospitalized for five days, her wound had been dressed and
had somehow healed. Therefore, during the autopsy it had been impossible to
accurately assess its shape. In addition, no ballistic expert was present.
Later, they had to be contented with the insufficient evidence of photographs.
Also, establishing
the posture of Marta’s head when she was hit was impossible. She was walking
and animatedly talking with her friend. She might have lowered her eyes to avoid
the sun—she was approaching the plaza. She might have looked up, turned back,
shook her head for a yes or no.
Certainly,
she wasn’t shot at close range. Not from the street, which was empty. From the
buildings, then. The projectile had entered above her left ear. Since she didn’t
walk backward, it could only have come from the premises at her left.
Jurisprudence.
Straight left. Left and behind. Left and front.
Same level. Higher. Higher still. Up high. Fifty windows. By all means, police
experts tried to reduce such number. Frantic computations—is it what enthralled
you? Were you trying to follow those desperate attempts, taking a maddening
number of days, while fingerprints or other possible evidence faded away? After
all, it was your field of expertise—calculating angles of incidence, fall
trajectories, velocity, impact. Hadn’t you done just that for your entire life?
All the Sanskrit must have been no more than a crossword to you. Did the puzzle
keep you occupied? Did you form an opinion? Come to a conclusion?
Buildings were live entities to you. You
treated them like persons. You had feelings for them. You could perceive their
soul. Did you foresee the absurdity? Twenty years later—past an endless trial
neither acquitting nor condemning, settling out of despair for ambiguous compromise—the
only ascertained culprit of the crime is the building.
I told
you the inquiry had focused on a particular window, one blocked by an air
conditioner—on the basis of a chemical particle found on its sill, maybe a
trace of gun powder, although the same residue, probably caused by pollution,
was then found elsewhere. I mentioned how such a bulky item would have forced
the shooter to lean far out of the window. Otherwise the bullet would have hit
the appliance, crashed into the opposite wall, or gone upwards, ending
god-knows-where after some kind of parabola. But it couldn’t have reached the
street unless the shooter’s arm had bypassed the obstacle. Whoever killed Marta
saw her, if the shot—as it was decided—came from that particular point. Yet the
crime was judged unintentional, which could only be true if the shooter thought
the pistol was empty. An old relic, a toy.
You,
of course, must have seen her picture. You must have known it by heart. I didn’t
until twenty years later, when the months preceding your death briskly came to
mind, and I dared taking a look at what I had previously ignored. Meaning, why
you were so enthralled by a news item while you should have focused on your
cancer, your pain, your imminent death.
Her
face startled me, changing my preexistent feelings.
She was
a casual victim—press, police, and law concurred on this topic. Her
extraneousness to all sorts of troubles was stated beyond doubt (arbitrary as
such conclusion might be). A plain girl, no-nonsense, a good student, not
involved in politics. Her romantic life, straight-forward and pristine. Just a
faithful boyfriend, no jealousy involved. No drugs. Thus, she was described.
The shot being intended for her was out of the question. The projectile had accidentally
met her. Those later accused of pulling the trigger didn’t know her, therefore couldn’t
have premeditated her killing. She had never met them (arbitrary as such
conclusion may be).
These
assumptions informed my perception of the events while I kept perusing the
literature. A plethora of articles—even books—all regard the inquiry, trials,
prosecutors, defendants, and witnesses. They comment about clumsiness and
delays in the investigations, prosecutors’ irregular ways with the witnesses
and following legal claims against the prosecutors, witnesses’ contradictions,
reversals, obstructive behaviors, and sheer absence of evidence. They describe
a public opinion split between those believing the defendants’ guilt and those swearing
for their innocence, persuaded that a terrible error was being made. Medias found
a mine of diamonds in the murder of a twenty-two-year-old, but the focus of all
that clamor wasn’t Marta. Her life had very little to offer. In fact, nothing
at all.
Her
face startled me. Something seemed wrong with the picture … the entire picture
I mean. See, the girl staring from the papers is uncannily beautiful—her gaze almost
disturbingly smart, deep, and pure. If her life was as unexceptional as
reported, she wasn’t. Honestly, it is
hard to believe she hadn’t been chosen. Or chased.
It
occurred to me you had lost a daughter about three decades earlier. You had
just married—she was your first girl. Not yet three years old, she died of a
rare, sudden, incurable illness. Sparse symptoms had started in late summer,
but she lasted until the beginning of May. For nine months you struggled, trying
all sorts of cures, bringing her into whatever clinic offered a fistful of hope.
I remember you at the airport, coming back from the foreign town where she had
finally passed—the doctors being unable to keep her destiny in check. You
brought back a doll you gave me as a gift, a cute little nurse. You said your
daughter had sent it.
Nothing the nurse could do now. Not for your
girl. But you brought it as a concluding memento. Did it mean something still could
be fixed after someone dies? Or was she intended for prevention? To be aware of
future vulnerabilities.
It
occurred to me that Marta died shortly after the date of your daughter’s passing.
Had you observed the recurrence? You never talked about it. You had had four
more daughters, a good marriage, a good life.
I
recalled a black and white picture of your little girl. I had found it between
the pages of a journal I had left unattended. You might have put it there. Your
child looked very smart, uncommonly beautiful. In the photo, her gaze has the
same uncomfortable depth I saw in Marta’s. Is it just afterthought? Do these
eyes seem to reflect the imponderable, just because we know they are
irreversibly shut? Because they have seen their last vision? I am not sure.
Once the crime scene was determined (in a
quasi-random manner), the inquiry only had to find out who was behind the
window at the crucial moment. Luckily, the timing had been properly documented.
Initially, all denied having entered that particular room, that morning. But a
telephone was inside it, near the door, from which calls had been dialed a
minute after the shot. Getting ahold of the caller wasn’t hard. She was
faculty, an assistant to the Department Head. The entire case started to take
shape around this first witness as she slowly articulated her memories.
Contradictory, vague. Then sharper. Convoluted, baroque. Then suddenly lucid. Like
a Master of Ceremonies, the first witness named other witnesses in a non-linear
progression, subject to rectifications, erasures, and changes. The new
witnesses, as they came on stage from the wings, proceeded quite similarly.
They also dug out of memory names, faces, events—a slow and complicated
delivery, punctuated by dramatic reversals.
The
case, instead of unraveling, built itself. Strange construction—partly a maze,
partly a castle of cards. Hocus-pocus.
Two young teaching assistants were accused,
one of the actual killing, the other of abetting. Both were promising scholars.
They had no motive, but their alibis were confused and porous. Still no proof
was found—they were judged upon witnesses’ declarations. They claimed
innocence. All verdicts (the case was reopened a number of times) were
unavoidably ambiguous, due to the inherent weakness of the inquiry. The case
had poor foundations, flimsy structures. It reposed on mud. The defendants were
found guilty each time, but charged with negligible penalties. A few years of
prison for the shooter, then transformed into house arrest. Only house arrest
for the accomplice.
I am
wondering if you were also trapped in the spider web, stilled by the unsolvable
question. Did they do it or not? Are they criminals—those twenty-and-some who
could be your students, your children, those well-bred middle class boys? Are
they clear? Are we burning vampires? Are we sacrificing lambs? I wonder if you entered
the maze, if you played the guessing game. If you did, you would have told no one.
You would have kept your deductions for yourself.
Twenty
years later, I certainly brooded about it. Had I been called to be part of the
jury in one of those trials, I should have necessarily formed an opinion. Based
on facts? Facts were missing, still are. Based on what? If I look at pictures
(the papers abounded with them) what do I see in the defendants’ eyes? Tough
question.
I am
glad I wasn’t part of the jury. I am glad I missed the case altogether, in 1997.
Because now it brought back—like an unwanted echo—a similar one I had followed in
1975. I was a teenager. It was spring. Together with other protesters I had sat
in the courtroom and demonstrated in front of it, on occasion of the infamous Circeo
massacre. Two girls from the outskirts were abducted by a trio of upper-class boys—very
wealthy, a bit older—brought into one of their empty vacation houses, abused, and
raped. One of them was killed, the other left in critical condition in the
locked trunk of a car.
I knew one of the boys by sight. Some of
those rich guys hung on their pricey motorbikes in front of girls’ schools.
They mated with girls of their own milieu, but didn’t disdain borrowing less
fortunate ones for fun, or to make fun of them.
The
trial called attention both for gender and class-related issues. The accused were
known for their extreme-right beliefs. Nazi. Nihilistic. Amoral. Deep contempt
for their victims’ social status admittedly informed the crime, otherwise
explained by machismo, bravado, and ennui. Guilt was proved without a doubt.
The three got life, but two managed successful escapes. Interestingly, the defendants
didn’t seem affected by the trial. Neither did they show remorse, nor attempt
to justify themselves. Of course, claiming innocence was impossible, yet their
supreme indifference was eerie and disquieting. As if what had occurred was
irrelevant. As if the machinery of justice had befallen them by an unfortunate,
unforeseen error. As if, truly, the trial didn’t regard them. I remember the
guys’ faces, all over the news. I recall them quite well—their rubbery surface,
vacuous impenetrability.
Of
course, the two crimes have nothing in common. Under certain angles, they are
perfectly opposite. There, evidence was blatant. Here, facts vanish into thin
air. Even the bullet hole goes unnoticed, until the CAT scan reveals what’s
hiding in Marta’s brain. Yet there are subliminal echoes. For example, the
difference of status between accused and victim. The gratuitousness also resonates—the
appalling hypothesis that whoever killed did it for fun, toying with weapons in
order to fill listless moments. To prove something, perhaps? Both cases seem to
imply boys sharpening tools in hopes to become men, using innocuous girls as
living targets. And the bold look on the perpetrators’ face—both for those
claiming non-involvement, in Marta’s case (yet somehow unworried, uncaring of
alibis), and for those impassively admitting their guilt, as if it were a minor
annoyance.
Looking
in the eyes of Marta’s supposed killers isn’t recommended. Not a healthy
exercise. I would not trust my impartiality. I wouldn’t dare casting a
judgment. I’m sure you didn’t either.
Did
you blame the building? The school of Jurisprudence, the Law Library, the
corridors through which maybe a shooter escaped, the bathrooms where a murderer
might have flushed a weapon. Did you condemn those walls? You might have interrogated
them, repeatedly. Ask every stone, brick, and tile.
When I
moved a bit farther from your bed, to give someone else a chance, I switched
from a side position to a frontal one. Accidentally, I lowered my gaze and I
spotted the buckets. Until then I had concentrated on your face, your
intermittent smiles, especially the words you proffered with great effort.
Unbelieving, confused, shocked, I saw a mass of purple and brown percolating,
slowly filling those containers. No, they weren’t excrements—I hoped so for a
minute. I asked, later on. Those collapsing pieces were your intestines and
liver—they were your organs, surrendering. At least this is what a nurse said
to the uncouth relative. Clearly, everything could be said by then. You
wouldn’t survive the night. You, of course, were spared the vision of your
disintegration. It happened under cover. Did you sense it?
Marta’s parents donated her organs, in order
to respect a will she had previously expressed. You must have read it in the
news. Her heart, liver, both of her kidneys, saved four lives. Her eyes granted
two persons’ vision. Six in total.
I am
thinking of the little doll you brought back from Zurich after your daughter
died. I remember you pulling it out of your pocket at the airport. I reflect,
now, upon the kindness and care carried by your gesture. I remembered tears in
your eyes, the crack in your voice. Uncle dear, what did you want to say? Please.
Can something still be repaired after someone’s death?
I
remember when they pulled a sheet over your face, then they rolled the cot
through the corridor. It was night. Relatives sat on metal chairs. The bulbs
cast a green light. Farewell.
Did
you wonder, during the fall—you spent many weeks alone, sent like an
uncomfortable parcel from hospital to clinic to hospital, all over Europe—why
the witnesses of Marta’s murder (those who at the fatal moment where in the
incriminated room, originally empty then filling up, slowly, like a Swiss clock
animated by mechanic figurines) built their Byzantine soap opera? If the crime still
screams for a motive, so do those conflicting memories, affirmed then denied,
reaffirmed then denied again.
Why
would several people lie about something so grave? For grave reasons would be
the obvious answer. Such as covering up their own guilt. Or the guilt of someone
close. Someone powerful perhaps, capable of revenge. Only these kinds of
reasons would explain incriminating scapegoats extraneous to the facts. Unless
the scapegoats were the target of pointed retaliation, and thus had been
damaged by design. Once again, no background justified such hypotheses. Yes—the
testimonials were full of incongruities, repeatedly denied, then reaffirmed.
But a purpose for the entire fabrication (if such) was never detected. It
seemed aimless—a self-fed nightmare, pulling the dreamers ever deeper, adrift
in a labyrinth, unable to backtrack and find a way out.
The
overall impression is that many had something to hide. Routine institutional
corruption. Maybe each witness knew a fragment of uncomfortable truth. All
started with a partial lie, then got lost in translation. Individual lies
conflicted with one another, leading to more confusion. All feared all at some
point. The compass needle went crazy, then it randomly stopped, pointing no
matter where. As for a game of musical chairs, someone was left standing.
Maybe
a number of personnel and faculty were involved, each for some kind of irregularity.
Those firearms circulating in the building might have been a minefield,
implying serious responsibilities. Maybe all knew how Marta was killed. The
institution then attempted to do what institutions do: shield itself, fight for
its own survival, crushing a few unfortunate members au passage.
Ask
the stones.
Isn’t
it vertiginous? Someone shoots a bullet, hits a college student calmly strolling
from one lesson to the next, on a sunny day. The sky is clear and cloudless.
Whoever shot knows what happened.
Let’s
say it was an accident. A projectile escaped. The shooter didn’t even see where
it went. Let’s say he or she was on the first floor, perhaps in a bathroom, and
immediately ran to the street, dumped the gun, jumped on a bus, forgot. Hard to
believe—wherever escaped, the killer would have learned about Marta’s death soon
enough. Someone killed the girl and lived with it. If no one else, the murderer
knows. Maybe the killer died, in which case also the truth is gone.
Yet—isn’t it vertiginous—a perspective must
exist, a vantage point, a location, from where all has been visible. The hand
and the gun. The moment of taking aim. The trajectory of the bullet. Marta’s
fall. The weapon disposal. The killer’s escape. A perspective exists from where
these actions formed a readable pattern. It’s a matter of distance, of angle. Should
the viewer have climbed on Minerva’s shoulders? Ask the statue. The university church’s
dome could have been the spot. Ask the pigeons. Some walls, some roofs should
have been removed in order to properly observe. Not unthinkable. Utilize vellum
paper, trace dotted lines instead of solid ones.
I
remember when you told me about the Birds. What an ancient memory unburied. I
was a little kid. What you said sounded like a fairy tale, your voice both
enticing and dreamy while you explained about these students of yours, revolting
against things I didn’t understand. You weren’t sure either … but I detected
pride in your voice—admiration and a tinge of stronger emotion. Could it have
been longing? Those students did things strange and amusing. For instance, they
imitated birdcalls instead of talking. More exciting, once they climbed the
very top of a dome, perching there for a long time, night and day. They had
chosen a magnificent church in the very middle of town. I imagined them nestled
in the heights, stars at reach, but I also imagined them running, arms extended,
in harmonious formations. In my mind, I saw then coasting sidewalks, brushing facades,
elegant, supple, wild. And I pictured them blue, head to toe. I was a young
kid. It was nineteen sixty-eight. At the time when Marta was shot, the Birds
were obsolete memories. No one perched nowhere. No human I mean. And I do not
believe in gods.
During
your last summer, I had the chance to spend time with you, give you a daily
massage good for nothing, maybe honoring the doll-nurse you brought me decades
before. Sometimes I gave you a ride, or we had a talk, commenting about what
was mostly on your mind. The murder of Marta Russo.
In the
fall, you frequently called me overseas, where I lived, from various countries
where you were receiving useless treatment. You never sounded hopeless, always
cheerful, as if just wanting to chat. Yet I slowly realized something was
incongruous with your calls. You were sending a message. Time was narrowing. I
should come.
I kept postponing. Flying to see you in
emergency meant I was admitting the end. I showed up eventually, and I caught
your last twenty-four hours. Then I took a couple planes back—a long journey. I
sat by the window and of course cried non-stop. I didn’t try holding it. Hours
later, I noticed the landscape was visible. We had lost altitude while flying
over Canada.
I
remember how intricate and beautiful the earth looked. Everything. Mountains,
rivers, lakes, meadows. Streets, towns, hamlets. I remember how each fragment
seemed to have fallen in place, carefully disposed, perfectly designed. A kind
of peace came my way. Do you hear me?
A kind
of forgiveness.
Marta
Russo, a 22-year-old student of Law, was shot on May 9th, 1997,
within the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
In the last years of his life, professor
Antonino Giuffré devoted his rich academic and cultural experience to the
preservation of historical architectural landmarks, especially ancient towns.
His efforts were interrupted by his premature passing.
Toti
O’Brien was
born in Rome and lives in Los Angeles. Her work has most recently appeared in Lotus-Eaters, Masque & Spectacle,
Feminine Inquiry, and Indiana Voices.
