Liberal no. 41/1999
Dear Mina,
avalanches of commentary have poured in on the outcome of Giulio Andreotti’s trial. As usual, a judicial affair has been the occasion for analyses and considerations of a completely different kind: from a rereading of Italy’s recent history, to the judiciary-politics relationship, to the role of the pentiti. In all this bailamme, only he, the eternal Julius, the accused and then acquitted, seemed, as his usual self, unflappable and able to hold his own in a situation that would have blown anyone’s mind. Won’t this be another sign of his superiority?
Vittorio G., Imola
I was reminded of Edward J. Robinson’s face in the movie “Cincinnati kid,” when, at the end of an interminable poker game, he discovers the jack of diamonds and wins the game of a lifetime. Not his, of course, but that of the antagonist, on this occasion Steve McQueen. It was a normal victory, challenging, but normal. So obvious that it does not shock the eye or alter the winner’s voice.
What if instead of the jack of diamonds the two of spades had appeared? The face would be the same, the control total, the gaze impassive. And, with his voice uncracked, he would hiss something heavy-handed and wittily ironic.
The protagonist, the “however successful,” walked the catwalk immediately granted to him by the media with the calm air of someone who, indeed, would have walked it anyway. As nonchalantly as ever. Were it not for some concession to irony about the six-year pain in the ass of gathering evidence as obvious as the theorems to be dismantled were ridiculous, his talk would have had no inflection. Quiet discourse without loftiness, with intelligence, measure, caution, confidence. Present at almost all trial hearings, no blatantness was ever caught in him, he never spewed any venom, and his dissent from the castles of the accusatory hypotheses was made in a half-voice, as if politely asking an inattentive passenger to remove his suitcase from the vacant seat.
Around him, but without touching him, the choir. The usual inevitable chorus with choir functions in its full secondary status. To the choir, which by its very nature has the role of a sideline, lucidity and objectivity do not necessarily belong. The chorus reacts, does not act, and shouts and seems to be heard louder only because it is made up of so many voices. Inside the chorus, indifferently of those in favor and those against, all have vented malice or anger or cunningly to support party theories, instrumentalizing in favor of a faction, a current, a theory, a fact that is not properly instrumentalized. So private that it should not be used so brutally and so important that it cannot be trivialized. Discrediting or exalting the Prosecutor’s Offices, hymning or deploring judges, questioning the importance of the pentitocracy, redefinitions of the terms “mafia” and “anti-mafia,” victor’s bandwagon to be occupied indiscriminately, parade of the vanquished to be justified historically.
I wonder how ridiculous Senator Andreotti must have considered this. He whose behavioral characteristic is not to mix with others the possibility of responsibility. He, with those artificial eyes that give off the deafening hiss of intelligence. He, with his terminator Chinese face, with his fierce 20-something focus, with the serene consciousness of being Italy, with the calm air of one who seemed to be the only one not desperately waiting for the court’s response as personal rehabilitation or final sinking.
Perhaps an attempt was made to destroy a symbol, the symbol of this postwar Italy. And with the burial of the eternal Julius, our recent history would be consigned to oblivion and contempt.
This was not the case. “What has been done to my family over the years is something that cannot be said with words. It has been continuous and unceasing pain. We should be entitled to a few more years of life.” You are certainly right senator, but it is only ordinary mortals who consider life by counting the number of years, not you.
