The witness
TRANSLATED WITH GROK
Ca** assistant, Oi** – a young Ch**** woman – came to see me only once. I was living in the outskirts of Lo***. She came to collect a painting that Ca** loved so much, an antique piece I’d sourced from various flea markets, and after that we stayed in touch by email, but I didn’t really know her. We only talked about the shipment and nothing else.
Ca**, who is no longer with us, was like one of those homing pigeons that shuttled between Lo** and Ne*** on weekends. She said: “Those people are from Me*** – better not to quarrel with them.”
Me***? The only thing I know about Me*** is Pa***. I’ve never been to Co****.
Today I find myself on an island, contemplating the past and telling my friends about my Lo*** adventures. But the problem is the judiciary – they’ve stuck their nose in, and I don’t feel like talking.
“Which dreams are you talking about, Raci***?”
After 10 years in what they once called a madhouse, I’m finally a free man again – brand new. Dreams? What dreams – torture, maybe. After more than 30 years, Italian intelligence has discovered that it was nothing but torture: judicial torture. I’ve traveled back and forth between fantasy and reality, and about Ca** I’ve never told anyone anything – not even the…
I knew neither him nor Lo***. Maybe now everyone knows that they used methods straight out of A Clockwork Orange on the victim to make him talk. For years, the prosecutor’s office denied it to the courts, saying I was just a madman with psychiatric disorders. They forced a compulsory psychiatric treatment (TSO) on me in a psychiatric clinic. “You dreamed those dreams,” they even went so far as to say. But throughout all these years, I’ve never spoken.
“Go to Lo***, go to Ro***, go to Ca*** and get the information we need” – that’s what they did to everyone, manipulating their minds just to extract the information necessary for their investigations.
You won? The world collapses – you’ve gotten yourself into trouble.
To avoid letting them win, I kept all my studies secret because that’s all they wanted. I relied on the protection of friends and collaborators in IT. They’re so convinced it’s all about 5G that they can’t possibly know I created BU*** myself.
But what do you expect me to have known, Mr. Prosecutor? They were doing their job and I was doing mine. Tell me, is there any company in the world that doesn’t have hidden dealings? I didn’t know anything about them – that’s what I told the procurator
“They want to know what you were doing in private,” I told them – mathematics.
They didn’t believe me, and the torture began. They did it to everyone I knew – Lo**, Ca**, Be** – it was enough to have any contact, and the madness of the lost world kicked off. The world of dreams.
I needed a den to hide in, maybe a rundown one that looked criminal to the eye, so I could have some presumed protection.
Magir***: “Did you infiltrate among criminals just to make people believe you had mafia protection?”
Raci***: “What would you have done?”
Magir***: “What would I have done? I wouldn’t have talked to anyone.”
Raci***: “I felt like I was being followed.”
I financed myself with illegal gambling – poker. I was good at it and almost always won. Lor*** was the one who traveled most often from one country to another and always refused to play, knowing full well he’d lose. We played underground in basements – me and the customers of the place where I worked as a…
…course of study – an independent school. I studied computer science. When the prosecutor’s office picked me up and brought me back to Italy, they started torturing me – me, who after those big casino wins no longer had a single penny even to survive.
After I escaped from the psychiatric clinic, they imposed a second compulsory treatment order (TSO) on me as an excuse to torture me.
No longer in the prosecutor’s office, but at my own home while I sleep.
In the dream, a man dressed in black wearing a green robe grabs my face and plunges it into a bucket of water, asking in an aggressive tone: “So, what did you do last night?”
I couldn’t understand what he meant by “night” – wasn’t I sleeping? Vivid dreams where everything feels real. He starts hitting me on the head, then takes a knife and stabs it into my back.
It feels like endless hours of torture: he grabs my hair, cuts it off, and forces the clumps into my mouth, making me swallow them. He drives needles into my head and starts prodding, ordering me to talk – but talk about what? A couple of poker games?
I knew the truth, and in a dream it’s hard to keep secrets.
Luca Cappai 