Joseph drew slowly on the cigar before continuing.
"My first memory of my mother," he said, "is mostly absence."
He spoke without sentiment.
"She died when I was twelve. Before that she had already become something distant, like a portrait in a corridor no one enters."
He rotated the glass of cognac.
"I was raised mostly by the servants. My father, Don Giovanni, believed children should be prepared for the world early. His idea of preparation was distance."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"My brother Vincenzo received most of his attention. I was told repeatedly that when I grew older I would understand why."
He shrugged.
"So I concentrated on growing older."
I waited.
"You might imagine," Joseph continued, "that such arrangements produce envy."
"They do."
He took another slow draw from the cigar.
"At times I wished my brother would die."
The sentence was delivered calmly.
"Then another thought appeared. If he died, my father might miss him even more."
"So I stopped wishing for his death."
"The envy remained."
He glanced at me.
"You see, Silvio, a child can survive without a mother."
"But a child raised inside indifference begins to study cruelty very early."
The room remained quiet.
"Then I met Matteo."
His voice softened slightly.
"I called him Mat."
He looked briefly towards the piano.
"Most friendships begin gradually."
"Ours did not."
He smiled faintly.
"He understood me immediately."
"And I understood him."
"In a way that frightened other people."
Joseph leaned back.
"Mat had a curious problem."
"What kind?" I asked.
"He could not feel pain."
Joseph tapped ash into the tray.
"My problem was the opposite."
"I felt everything."
"Too much."
He laughed quietly.
"Between us we formed something resembling balance."
He took another drink.
"We spoke constantly about fathers."
"About brothers."
"About inheritance."
"And occasionally," he added calmly, "about murder."
I stared at him.
Joseph waved the thought away.
"Children say such things often."
"But children also listen to themselves."
"That is where the trouble begins."
He paused.
"One afternoon Mat told me something."
Joseph watched the smoke rising from the cigar before continuing.
"It was one of those theories children invent when they realise the world does not belong to them."
He spoke slowly.
"He said that somewhere there must exist a real family."
"A family that had made a mistake."
Joseph's smile returned faintly.
"In his theory we had been placed with the wrong people."
"Like luggage sent to the wrong address."
"One day, he said, they would discover the error."
"They would arrive at the door and apologise."
"They would tell us this life had only been temporary."
Joseph rotated the glass in his hand.
"They would take us away."
"To a house where nothing was locked."
"Where no one shouted."
"Where boys were expected to exist."
He looked at me.
"Mat was very precise about one detail."
"He said that when they finally came looking, we had to make sure we were home."
Joseph smiled faintly.
"I believed him for a while."
A long silence followed.
"Eventually," he said, "I solved the problem myself."
He looked at me.
"I brought that family into my house."
He leaned forward slightly.
"Mat's life was less stable than mine."
"His father remarried almost immediately after his mother died."
"The new wife preferred not to be reminded of the previous one."
"So Mat moved from house to house."
"Relative to relative."
"Like an object no one wished to keep."
He shrugged.
"I solved the problem by bringing him into my house."
"To my father he appeared to be another toy."
"A temporary companion for his younger son."
Joseph smiled.
"No one paid attention."
"That suited us."
He lit another cigar.
"Our friendship deepened."
"Which is another way of saying our conversations grew darker."
Joseph's eyes drifted briefly towards the window.
"My father's house was full of strange luxuries."
"Opium arrived in crates as gifts."
"Hashish circulated among the servants."
"Sometimes my father joined them."
He spoke with the tone of someone describing weather.
"Children observe everything."
"Especially what is forbidden."
He smiled faintly.
"My fascination with drugs began early."
"Mat shared that curiosity."
"One evening I found Matteo sitting with one of my father's oldest retainers, Badar Lala. His family had served ours longer than anyone could remember."
"Badar rolled a thin cigarette for Matteo."
"I watched."
"I wanted one as well."
"For a while I said nothing."
"Then I asked."
"Badar rolled another cigarette and handed it to me with both hands."
"'Sarkar,' he said."
Joseph glanced at me with a small smile.
"It meant something close to a master. Not quite Don. Something older."
"That cigarette was my first."
"I smoked it in Mat's honour."
"For nearly a year I believed no one had noticed."
"Eventually my father discovered what had been happening."
"Don Giovanni did not react well."
"Very badly."
He laughed quietly.
"He searched the house with a rifle."
"The servants were terrified."
"He found me running along the main road."
Joseph paused.
"He fired twice."
The image hung briefly in the air.
"I outran him."
"The town closed its shutters."
"Women pulled their children indoors."
"Two days later his men found me hiding in a cousin's mountain house."
"The punishment," Joseph said, "was memorable."
He smiled slightly.
"But it had one unexpected consequence."
"For the first time in my life…"
"I had my father's complete attention."
Joseph leaned back again.
"Pain can be a very efficient form of communication."
"Eventually my father decided discipline required professional assistance."
"A tutor was hired."
"Monsieur Sebastian."
Joseph's smile returned.
"He was a Frenchman."
"He believed strongly in corrective methods."
"Broken fingers."
"Hair pulled until my feet left the floor."
"Hours of confinement."
Joseph laughed softly.
"The problem was that I enjoyed irritating him."
"And the more inventive his punishments became…"
"The more inventive my disobedience became."
He glanced at me.
"You see the pattern."
I nodded.
Joseph continued.
"Eventually Monsieur Sebastian concluded that Matteo was the true cause of my behaviour."
"So he attempted to remove the influence."
Joseph's expression hardened slightly.
"He kept me under constant supervision."
"Restricted my movements."
"Separated us whenever possible."
"Then one evening, during one of our sessions, he made a mistake."
"He said something unfortunate."
Joseph inhaled slowly.
"He said: 'If you continue seeing that boy, I will have no choice but to kill him.'"
The room grew very quiet.
Joseph looked at the ember of his cigar.
"When he said that," he said calmly, "the situation clarified itself."
I felt my throat tighten.
"You decided to kill him."
Joseph nodded once.
"Monsieur Sebastian visited every Friday evening," he continued.
"He was a man of routine."
"He arrived through the main gate."
"The gatekeeper would call to announce him."
"I waited in the detached guest house."
Joseph spoke almost clinically now.
"There were two doors."
"An outer steel door."
"And an inner wooden one."
"I would open the inner door and leave the steel door shut for him to open himself."
"That was our habit."
He paused.
"This particular Friday the arrangement was altered in only one respect."
He took a slow drink.
"I had stripped a length of wire from an old lamp and run it along the frame of the steel door."
"The current came from the wall socket inside."
"I remember testing it first on the brass handle with the back of a spoon."
"The spoon jumped."
"That was enough."
Joseph's voice remained level.
"I left the room dark."
"I left the inner door open."
"I waited."
"When the gatekeeper called, I could hear Sebastian's car door close, then his footsteps on the gravel."
"He always paused outside for a cigarette."
"He liked to enter smelling of tobacco and correction."
Joseph glanced at me.
"I remember thinking, very clearly, that routine is only another name for trust."
He tapped ash into the tray.
"The steel door opened outwards. He put one hand on the frame and the other on the handle, just as he always did."
Joseph paused.
"When the current took him, it did not look dramatic at first."
"That is something people misunderstand about death."
"They expect theatre."
"What they get is interruption."
"He stiffened."
"The cigarette fell from his mouth."
"For an instant his body seemed undecided, as if it had not yet understood what was being asked of it."
"Then the muscles seized properly."
"The jaw locked."
"The neck drew back."
"One shoulder rose higher than the other."
"He made a sound I have never heard from a human being before or since."
"Not a cry."
"Not a word."
"More like something forced out of him by surprise."
Joseph rotated the glass in his hand.
"The body does strange things under electricity."
"It tries to become architecture."
"He remained upright for a moment, pinned there by his own contraction."
"The current entered through the hand and crossed the chest."
"That was the important part."
"The heart does not require much persuasion."
I swallowed.
"And then?"
"Then came ventricular fibrillation," Joseph said.
I frowned.
"What?"
He smiled faintly.
"Five amps will do that to a human heart, signor."
He took another slow draw from the cigar.
"After that, the body is no longer a body in the usual sense."
"It becomes weight."
"He collapsed half inside the doorway."
"One arm twisted beneath him."
"The side of his face struck the stone with a noise I still remember."
"The smell arrived almost at once."
"Not burning flesh exactly."
"More a sharp metal scent, mixed with tobacco and the embarrassment of the body."
He looked at the smoke above us.
"I stood there for some time."
"Not out of remorse."
"Out of curiosity."
"Children are often curious at the wrong moments."
The room remained silent.
"At last I switched off the current."
Joseph brushed ash from his sleeve.
"It was the first time I had taken a life."
He looked at me with the same faint, unreadable calm.
"It did not feel like power."
A pause.
"It felt like accuracy."