Wu Ming Page 3

  There we are, no problem. Hot serum begins to flow.

  Euphoria and well-being, one thumb after the other.

  He unties his Brooks Brothers tie.

  Silent fart of bliss. Smile. Happy Christmas.

  home

  Chapter 1

  Naples, Agnano racetrack, Sunday, 3 January 1954

  Magione was first to the enclosure, accompanied by the jockey wearing the blue and gold colours of the stable. He started walking round, shaking his neck, as though to ease the tension. A four-yearold tawny thoroughbred, thin, sharp muzzle, good season in ’53, placed plenty of times, two wins. Behind him, the jockeys introduced the other animals, superb, just shy of eighteen hands at the withers, their breath vanishing in the sharp afternoon air. Giuseppe Marano stroked the neck of his Ninfa, his absolute favourite, although he knew he was the more nervous of the two of them. He glanced quizzically at the spectators, then finished his tour of the enclosure, checking all the details. The filly snorted a few paces away from Lario: the colts weren’t doing too brilliantly. Then Verdi, Augusta and Redipuglia, very handsome too, but they’d be placed at best although Augusta might do well if the going was heavy. Until the previous day, before the clear sky of that winter Sunday, it had rained on Naples and the going was still soft. Monte Allegro, the most nervous of the group, turned up snorting and pulling at the bridle, ignoring the voice of his trainer, who seemed to be whispering something to calm him down. Nothing new there: Monte Allegro was one of those animals that are hard to control, that gulp down the first thousand metres before collapsing at the finish.

  In the stands, Salvatore Lucania lit a cigarette and watched the wind carry off the first breath of smoke. He had had to take off his gloves, and now he was almost regretting the fact: it was bitterly cold. He turned towards Cavalier De Dominicis and said, ‘Wasn’t this supposed to be the città d’o sole, the city of the sun? Fuck, it’s so cold you’d think we were in New York!’

  The cavaliere laughed, immediately followed by the cluster of people surrounding him. Lucania wrapped himself up in his camelhair coat and went on smoking.

  The two journalists came over to him, notebook in hand.

  ‘Signor Lucania, they say that Eduardo is interested in a film about your life. Have you met him?’

  ‘De Filippo? No. Great person, great artist, but they won’t let him make that movie, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘So, tell us, who would you choose to act you on the screen?’

  Lucania adjusted his glasses. ‘Cary Grant, of course. Of the Italians I like Amedeo Nazzari.’

  A grim and unambiguous look was fired at the press, warning them not to go too far. The man responsible was Stefano Zollo, bull neck crammed into his thin tie, with Victor Trimane at his side. His job to make sure that the boss wasn’t disturbed by people coming and going.

  ‘The horses are coming on to the track,’ announced the loudspeakers.

  The jockeys, already in the saddle for the warm-up, were making the horses stride to test the going. Ninfa looked like a white princess in the midst of the black horses. Marano fastened the crop to his wrist and pressed his cap low on his forehead. Lario caught the smell of a female and shook his head. Then Verdi and Magione passed, followed by Augusta and Redipuglia. Bringing up the rear was Monte Allegro; the black horse held his head high, his teeth bared, and Cabras, the Sardinian jockey, had trouble keeping him under control, and kept on talking to him and stroking him without any great success.

  Saverio Spagnuolo waited for the boy to come back with the odds from the bookies. He saw him speeding towards him, coming over to whisper, ‘Savé, Ninfa’s at 21.’

  Spagnuolo nodded and turned back towards the guy who had called him over: ‘Listen, pal, Ninfa is the absolute favourite, I can give you 10‒7, no more than that. But there are the other horses as well if you want them, and their odds are higher.’

  The other man gripped his hand, passing him the rolled-up banknotes. ‘You’re trying to get me to make a dick of myself. 10‒7 is fine. Ninfa to win.’

  ‘As you wish. Take care of yourself.’

  The clandestine bookmaker eyed the horses striding along the track and remembered his instructions: keep the odds as low as possible.

  He scribbled a few conventional hieroglyphics into his notebook before slipping it into his pocket. Then he sent the little boy back to the official bookies.

  ‘Give me 20,000 on Ninfa at 5–4.’

  ‘13–8.’

  ‘Even with the going so heavy?’ objected the punter, trying to persuade him to raise the odds.

  ‘13–8, a bargain. If you’re not happy, the bookie will give you 2–1.’

  Spagnuolo gripped the wad, counted quickly, scribbled something else and pulled off a strip.

  ‘Five thousand on Ninfa.’

  The track judge gave the signal for the horses to go to the starting gates. Magione was in first, followed by Augusta. Marano held Ninfa back until Lario was in there too. Monte Allegro was still running at large, giving his jockey a few problems. His nerves also infected Verdi and Redipuglia, who started snorting and pulling on their bridles.

  Gennaro Iovene closed the case of veterinary instruments, and headed for the stable door. The intense light dazzled him as soon as he was outside. He hesitated for a moment, then took the path to the right, towards the tracks, seeing the horses entering the gates in the distance. The man in the black coat, hands in his pockets, turned his back on the track. Iovene merely nodded at him, and when the man lit a cigarette he knew that his signal had reached its target.

  He walked on without turning around, hearing the mounting excitement of the public

  ‘The horses are in the starting gates. One minute to the close of betting on the totaliser,’ echoed the loudspeakers.

  Marano was keeping Ninfa on a tight rein. The filly stuck her muzzle through the barrier. The others were all in already, apart from Monte Allegro, who was still putting up resistance. With a series of powerful blows to his flanks, and the help of a couple of attendants, Cabras managed to get him in.

  Cassazione was almost as nervous as the black horse that had been last in. He was constantly giving nervous snorts. Standing beside him, Kociss didn’t feel comfortable with all that money in his pockets. It was more than he had counted in all his twenty years. He nodded to the men waiting for him over by the bookies, and slipped them the money in a single quick movement. They all set off at once, slipping their way through the punters who were besieging the bookies’ counters. Kociss held out the wad of banknotes: ‘A hundred thousand on Monte Allegro!’

  The bookmaker craned his neck. ‘What?’

  Louder. ‘A hundred thousand on Monte Allegro!’

  The same scene was played out at the other three counters. The bookies turned round in a single motion to rewrite the odds on their blackboards. Down from 7–1 to 5–2. It had worked.

  Kociss dashed like lightning to the totaliser, inside the covered building, pushed aside a few punters, and reached the betting office at the last available moment. ‘A hundred thousand on number six, Monte Allegro.’

  The cashier didn’t bat an eyelid and handed him his receipt. At the totaliser, the odds for Monte Allegro went down from 18–1 to just over 9–1. Kociss smiled to Cassazione. ‘Let’s get going.’

  The gates opened with a single metallic clang, spilling the horses out on to the track.

  ‘They’re off!’ thundered the commentator.

  Saverio Spagnuolo saw them dashing past him. He clutched the crumpled banknotes in his pockets and prayed to his mother in heaven that everything would go smoothly.

  All of a sudden Magione took a lead of a couple of lengths as they approached the bend. Marano let him go, holding Ninfa a little to the side in his wake. Immediately behind them was Verdi, flanked by Redipuglia ahead of Lario and Augusta, with Monte Allegro coming along the fence.

  Iovene stopped a few metres before the gate. He told himself it was because he was curious to see the race, but he knew very well that it was fear. Fear that something might go wrong. He had a permanent sense that the case was slipping from his sweaty hand, or that someone might grab it from him. The syringe inside was worth 250,000 lire. He gulped.

  After 1,000 metres Ninfa began to move up, overtaking Magione, who was running at the head along the fence, until she was head to head. Augusta and Lario started falling behind, on the unsuitable surface. Cabras held Monte Allegro on a tight rein, shortening their distance from the front runners and overtaking Verdi on the inside. Marano turned around to check the situation, and saw the black horse gaining ground until he was right behind Magione. All he could think, 400 metres from the end of the race, was, ‘Not yet.’

  Kociss and Cassazione stood by the finishing line, holding their breath.

  Two hundred metres from the line, Ninfa, thundering forwards, swerved slightly to the side, already more than a length ahead of Magione. In a flash Cabras slipped Monte Allegro’s muzzle into the open gap. Marano understood that the moment had come and worked his elbows up and down as though to get the maximum out of the horse, while actually holding back the forward surge. He saw Monte Allegro pushing at his flanks, and stretching his muzzle forwards before winning by a neck.

  Salvatore Lucania watched the final dash with a contented smile, while everyone around him, and down below in the stands, exploded with rage and disbelief. Monte Allegro first, followed by Ninfa, Magione and Redipuglia.

  Cavalier De Dominicis applauded. ‘Congratulations, Don Salvatore, you’ve won again.’

  Lucania gave a seraphic smile. ‘Of course, everyone likes me. Even lady luck.’

  The cluster of people thronging around them applauded and laughed in unison.

  Stefano Zollo stayed impassive, moving
only when Lucania decided that the moment had come to go down.

  Having withdrawn the pile of money, Kociss and Cassazione felt their nerves settling, and relaxed into a laugh that stopped them from speaking for a few seconds. When they reached the group they grew serious again. Zollo took the piles of banknotes and made as if to go, but the boss intervened: ‘No, these are good lads, that’s the phrase, isn’t it? Good lads! Bravi guaglioni! Let’s give ’em a nice present, Steve, they’ve deserved it!’

  His bodyguard held out some of the money to the two boys, keeping his eye on his boss until he had stopped nodding.

  The two errand boys looked at the banknotes but didn’t have the courage to take them. Five thousand lire. Each. Zollo said, ‘Now clear off.’

  They fled, wildly excited about the money and the fact that the big boss had deemed them worthy of his attention.

  While the cavaliere was saying goodbye, bowing repeatedly, Zollo held out the envelope to the man in the black coat, muttering, ‘Everyone will get his share.’

  It was at that moment that the slap rang out. Zollo saw it out of the corner of his eye. White scarf and hat. A young man, less than thirty, well dressed, had slapped the boss’s face. Not a hard slap, but a challenge, an insult. He turned around to grab him, to pulverise the lunatic, but Don Salvatore Lucania, known to the world as Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, flashed a look at him: don’t react.

  He stayed motionless, his eyes fixed on the moron who was playing with fire. He imprinted those faces in his mind. There were two of them, and they both had the guts to stare Luciano straight in the eyes before the swarm of associates pushed them out of reach.

  Lucky Luciano smiled. The smile that Zollo knew very well, the one with which he could invite you to your own funeral. ‘Don’t worry, just a bit of fun, nothing of any consequence! The ability to lose is something that comes with age, my friends. Clearly fortune smiles most kindly on old men like me!’

  Words that did little to ease the tension.

  Zollo gritted his teeth as they made for the exit.

  Chapter 2

  Bologna, district of St Donato, 4 January

  Cold whose like only the oldest residents can remember, a long time before the war when so many of us had just been born. In all the bars in Bologna, the thermometer is the focus of everyone’s conversation. Long discussions, not to say arguments, about the coldest winter of the century, as though talking about it around the stove would keep shivers and flu away.

  In the Bar Aurora, until just a few days ago, most of us maintained that in spite of everything the first few days of February ’32 had been the coldest in living memory. Then yesterday it said in II Resto del Carlino that the temperature hadn’t dropped to thirteen degrees below zero for sixty years. Someone immediately tried to contradict this, saying that, as everyone knew, the Carlino made up stories if it hadn’t got any, and anyway L’Unità, the communist paper, hadn’t said anything of the kind, and someone shouted from the little billiard room not to go talking rubbish, that in ’32 his sow had died of cold, and that meant that it must have been at least fifteen below zero.

  In the end, the question was resolved by Garibaldi, who is one of the oldest of the regulars and still hasn’t gone soft in the head, even at the age of seventy-five.

  ‘Thirteen degrees, I remember it well, I was about seven years of age. It was called “the cold of the Dead” because of Death in the taroccho pack, number thirteen. And if Bortolotti’s sow died in ’32 it’s because he lived in Vergato before the war, and everyone knows it’s colder there than it is in the city.’

  So a verdict was reached on the cold. So after that for a few days everyone’s been talking about the snow, because talking about it means judging the work of the snow shovellers, and hence of the communist city administration. And it doesn’t matter if we’re communists, everyone can see that the streets are in a terrible state, so everyone tries to have his say without blaming Mayor Dozza. Because basically no one wants to hand the victory to the reactionaries on the Carlino, which comes out every day with pictures of some snowblocked street or other under a scandalised headline.

  ‘I’ll tell you this, I’ve still got a good memory,’ says La Gaggia, laying out the fifteen cards. ‘The winter of ’27 was worse. I remember the arcades, they looked like tunnels with all the snow piled up on one side reaching up to the arches.’

  Garibaldi shakes his head, folds up his cards and downs the last drop of grappa. Then he raises his eyes and his empty glass to Capponi, on the other side of the bar, too busy arguing with his brother to pay him any attention.

  ‘Never mind remembering,’ says Bottone excitedly. ‘In ’27 there were still people to sweep away the snow. Just try sweeping it up on Via Saragozza! You could build a whole San Luca arcade on the other side of the street!’

  He strikes the table in front of Walterún, who can’t make his mind up whether or not to discard. ‘Come on, pal, this time we’ll thrash them.’

  And sure enough, barely has the Pugliese laid his two cards on the table than Gaggia, Bottone’s partner, reveals four queens and gets off to a great start with twenty-eight points.

  ‘It’ll take a bit of nerve!’ says Bottone, throwing down a card in the suit of coins. ‘Tell me what the mayor has to do with snow in the street. No, really, spell it out for me. Does he choose the people who are supposed to do the shovelling?’

  La Gaggia is about to speak, but Bottone is off. ‘No, because you’d think that everyone here’s a Party member. But in fact everyone knows that the snow shovellers are completely useless, they don’t want to lift a finger.’ He concentrates on the game for a moment, then he starts up again. ‘Where’s the surprise in that? Is there anyone left in the world who can do his job properly? No, all the decent people have retired, 5,000 lire a month and thanks very much, and then you’ve got these other blokes who are taking half a million to sit and warm their arses.’ His tone rises, his voice trembles, his clear eyes widen. ‘By God, they’re lucky we’re old,’ and here, as ever, his finger starts knocking on the table, ‘because if I had a button to launch an atom bomb and wipe out the lot of them, maybe a few innocent people would get killed as well, but I’d press it anyway, I can guarantee you that,’ he almost shouts, throws the king of cups on the table and finds himself trumped by Garibaldi with a Moor.

  Bottone is one of the best tarocchino players in the bar. We all know that it’s almost impossible for him to make a mistake; the only thing is to hope that he gets nerves, because if he starts off on his talk about the atom bomb and the button, he can easily throw away his hand. And he delivers this speech at least once a day, on the most diverse themes, his finger knocking on the table and the atomic mushroom that will wipe out all injustice. That’s why Rino Gualandi is known to everyone as Bottone, or Button.

  The only one who doesn’t pipe up about the snow is Walterún. Partly because he needs to concentrate on the cards, because he isn’t exactly a champion player, but more importantly because he spent seventeen years in Manfredonia, near Bari, and then thirty in Milan, where he was a labourer, and he only came here twelve years ago. So his opinion does count, but it just fills up the conversation, because it’s only as a matter of curiosity that he wants to know how much snow there was in the Piazza del Duomo in ’28.

  Anyway, the weather – the past and the temperature – is a subject for old men, the ones who treat the Bar Aurora as a second home: tarocchino and chatter. The ones who are still working, meanwhile, are in the billiard room, talking about sport and women. But what’s important isn’t so much what they’re talking about, or who’s doing it, you must always respect the Rule: don’t speak under your breath, if you have to whisper in a corner go and confess to the priest, don’t come here, no one’s interested. Here we talk in threes, in fours, sometimes the whole bar all at once, because there are topics like cycling or politics that inflame people’s emotions and make them raise their voices. Then there are the rare times when someone takes offence and fails to show up for a while, we all remember those, and also the ones, even rarer, when someone gets a bit plastered and the fists fly, there’s a bit of pushing, a few slaps, and the more sober among us have to intervene. Like that time in ’48, when Stalin threw Tito out of the Cominform, and we were all here talking till daybreak, with the shutter half down.