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  The younger men, on the other hand, never talk about anything at all. They pretend they’ve just dropped by in passing, so they never take their coats off, even if they never go anywhere. But some of them do, like the filuzzi dancers, for example, show up looking like they’ve stepped out of an American movie, with their mackintoshes on and smoking their cigarettes without their hands, and you’d think they were about to order a whisky, and instead it’s always a Fernet or a Sambuca. Afterwards off they go to the dance hall, and some of them have routines that would put Fred Astaire to shame. We like it when they drop in to have a drop before going dancing, because we all feel a bit like those men with their towels over their shoulders who massage boxers before they go into the ring. Because Robespierre Capponi, known to everyone as Pierre, is the best dancer in the Party cell, in the quarter, perhaps in the whole of Bologna. And Nicola nags him the whole time, when he can’t get up in the morning because he got home late, but he also knows that we’re proud to have the Filuzzi King pouring our drinks, we’re proud to have him in our bar.

  Nicola Capponi, known to us all just as Capponi, with that deep voice of his, it’s better not to wind him up. At closing time, he croaks something, gets out the sawdust and starts stacking the chairs. Then even the ones who have stayed until late get up and head for home, but almost regretfully, and you’d almost think that if they didn’t have to close the place we’d just stay there all the time.

  Chapter 3

  Agnano Allied base, Naples, 6 January

  They’d brought him there shortly before Christmas. A present for the troops, the showpiece for the new recreation area. Then Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, back to the family, holidays; work had been suspended and he had been left there with only two armchairs, a table, the old jukebox and the picture of the president for company.

  What a situation! The inactivity was really exhausting. Doubts and hypochondria racked his self-belief. Will I still be able to do my work properly? Will they be able to get me to work so far away from home? Will I still make people laugh, keep them interested with the news, move them? McGuffin had no answers. He consoled himself by thinking about past glories, and every now and again, to keep hope alive, he peeped out of the door, hoping that someone might pay him a little attention.

  Fully assembled on 16 February 1953 in the factories of McGuffin Electric, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he had been one of the first deluxe models turned out by the company. At the end of the month the Bainton family had bought him in an electrical goods shop in Baltimore. From his very first beginnings, McGuffin had proved to be a truly extraordinary television set. On 5 March, after less than a month of life, he had delighted the master of the house with the sensational news of the death of Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin. Thanks to the internally illuminated tube, none of the members of the family had worn their eyes out following the interminable live broadcast of the sentence passed on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, accused of spying for the Soviet Union and subsequently condemned to death. On the seventeen-inch rectangular screen, even grandmother Margaret, a half-blind octogenarian, had managed to make out the few images of the signing of the armistice in Pam Mun Jon, in Korea. It was 27 July. Less than a month afterwards, McGuffin had announced that Moscow possessed thermonuclear bombs like the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That had been his final scoop. Since then, nothing. He had been switched off one evening in mid-August, and never switched back on again.

  Resold for the simple fact that he didn’t match the Swedish furniture in the new sitting room, and passed from hand to hand, he had ended up on a ship along with some Italian immigrants on their way home for the holidays. Bartered within only a few days for a Paperino motorcycle, he had arrived at the military base on Christmas Eve. He had not moved again since then. No one had even bothered to plug him in.

  The faint light of a bicycle flashed across McGuffin’s empty screen. A young boy, certainly not a soldier, was cycling along slowly beneath the streetlamps, looking furtively around. This was not a normal bike: above its front wheel, on the carrier, there was a big, wide, wooden platform.

  The light grew fainter and then went out. Through the spyglass in the door, McGuffin could just make out a pair of arms and a handlebar. He picked up a strange electricity in the air. He felt something stirring inside, even though he was not plugged in. The boy. The bike. The platform. A life of flight from that dark place where everyone seemed to have forgotten him. But how could he attract the boy’s attention? Deluxe model he might have been, but he hadn’t been designed to switch on all by himself. And anyway his plug was lying on the floor, he could not be dragged from his lethargy.

  The spyglass in the door widened with a squeak, and the boy’s face peeped in.

  ‘Take me with you! Carry me off!’ McGuffin longed to yell.

  But the boy appeared to need no incentive.

  Chapter 4

  Bologna, 7 January

  The mirror was too small for Pierre to see all of himself in it at once. But his movements were automatic by now: he could tie the knot in his tie with his eyes closed, get his trouser turn-ups right to the centimetre, check that the back vent of his jacket was properly creased and his buttons polished.

  He pulled tight on the laces of his good shoes, because he didn’t like having to stop in the middle of dancing to tie them again. When that happened he felt ludicrous and vulnerable.

  That Wednesday, as usual, Sticleina was the first to turn up. He stopped in the doorway for a moment, studied the bar intensely, took a long and thoughtful breath of smoke, and then threw the cigarette end away, shutting the door behind him, a moment before Garibaldi exploded, ‘Shut that door behind you, it’s letting the cold in!’

  Capponi looked darkly at his brother’s friend, as he set up the espresso machine to make him his usual caffè corretto.

  ‘Where are you off to this evening?’ asked La Gaggia from the table next to the stove.

  ‘The Pratello, I’d say.’

  ‘I see, and is there grazing to be had on that dancefloor?’

  Sticleina replied with mock regret. ‘Yes, but the guys from the Pratello won’t let you near their women. It would be more accurate to say that we go there to hear the Bonora Trio.’

  ‘Bring one of those girls back here for me some time, will you? I’m sure I could still cut a fine figure.’

  ‘A fine figure of shit,’ observed Walterún, trumping his trick.

  Pierre contemplated himself for a long time: he studied his dark eyes, his mother’s eyes, like the ones in the photograph in which she was dressed as a bride, the one that stood on the chest of drawers; the arch of his eyebrows, the straight nose, the thin cheeks. He slipped the photograph of Cary Grant from the top of the dressing table and wedged it between the wall and the mirror. He took a step back and tried to assume the same indescribable expression.

  A gust of chilly air ran through the bar, and the crash of the door signalled the arrival of Gigi, the umarein ed gamma, the ‘rubber man’ in Bolognese dialect, who pirouetted his way to the bar, where he lay horizontally on top of Sticleina, arms held above his head.

  ‘Oi, Capponi, bring me a bitters,’ he said, as the applause faded away.

  ‘So,’ said Sticleina, showing himself off to the new arrival, ‘don’t you notice anything special?’

  Gigi frowned and studied his friend more closely. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said, stretching out his finger to touch the coat. ‘Did you get it as an Epiphany present?’

  ‘It’s camel, bought in Milan. In instalments, of course.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, lucky you, still living with your folks, means you’re never short of a few things.’

  Sticleina brought a cigarette to his lips and held out the pack to Gigi. He thoughtfully took a drag and blew the smoke out fast, with some difficulty.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be living at home for long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My dad wants me to get married. He says you can’t drag a girl along behind you for ever.’

  ‘Hm, and what does your mother have to say on the matter?’

  ‘She says I should finish my training as a nurse. That I’ll have no prospects otherwise, and a woman needs security more than anything.’

  Gigi took advantage of the mirror behind the bar, the one inscribed with the word ‘Martini’, to check that his brilliantined hair was nice and smooth along the temples, slick and gleaming all the way to the little curls at the back of his neck.

  ‘The older generation are always saying things are easier for us, but I think things are pretty complicated all the same. If you’re with a girl, eventually you’ve got to marry her. If you want to marry her, you’ve got to have a decent wage, and then you have to wait to get married. What are you supposed to do?’

  Cary Grant’s faint smile was formal and elegant, and natural at the same time. His smile was a contradiction. Pierre tried to imitate it, but for that very reason he couldn’t. He was better at Cary’s walk, and had almost perfected his way of keeping his hands in his pockets.

  Brando arrived as the church clock chimes were coming to an end.

  ‘So, aren’t you ready yet?’

  ‘Pierre’s the one who’s dawdling.’

  ‘Get a move on, Pierre, you’re handsome enough already.’

  He pulled down his jacket so that it fell perfectly on his shoulders, and made sure that the white cuffs of his shirt protruded a centimetre and no more, otherwise he’d look like a peasant.

  Already striking a pose, he came out from behind the bar and found them standing in front of him, side by side like the three musketeers. Because that was how he saw them, just like in Dumas’s novel: Athos, Porthos and Aramis. And he was D’Artagnan, the boaste
r, the best one.

  ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘What cheek! You’re the only one we’re waiting for!’ exploded Brando.

  Gigi blew a raspberry at him. ‘Yeah, come on, it’s getting late.’

  Pierre’s eyes met those of his brother Nicola, hard as nails as ever, and as always when he went dancing. He saw him turn red and holding in his rage. That look granted him no more than a few minutes of independence, just long enough to say goodbye to everyone, and he had every intention of squeezing every last second out of it. He came out from behind the bar and walked slowly across the floor, elegant and loose-limbed. He stopped at the cardsharps’ table. ‘See you, Bottone, I’m off. Don’t win too much.’

  ‘See you, you old rogue.’

  He said goodbye to La Gaggia and Walterún, and waited for a glance from Garibaldi, like a blessing before he set off for the arena.

  To Bortolotti, Melega and the rest playing boccette on the billiard table he gave only a nod that was meant for everyone.

  Nicola’s face was purple by now, he was about to explode: it was time to clear off. Pierre watched him rubbing the bar more and more quickly, and decided he had provoked him enough.

  ‘Let’s go!’

  The four of them left in single file, dressed up to the nines for a party, ready for anything, like heroes entering the lists to outshine everyone else.

  A moment later they were back in command, in the street, with their coats rolled up under the seats so that they wouldn’t get stuck in the wheels. Each one had an elegant accessory that was all his own: Brando his hat, Gigi his leather gloves, Sticleina his father’s watch and chain, and Pierre a white mohair scarf.

  At their head, Gigi Mazzoni pedalled straight-backed and chest out, parting on the right, square chin. By day he was a mechanic in a factory, always covered with black oil and with a smell of engines that hit you from a long way off. But in the evening he was someone else entirely: his dancing skill, his smooth, lightning moves, had won him the nom de guerre of ‘the rubber man’.

  Behind him came Giuseppe Branca, a barber who, after The Wild One was shown in the cinema, was known to everyone as ‘Brando’, because of his barely detectable resemblance to the actor. He was obviously very proud of it, and from that day the familiar ‘Pippo’ had passed on, to make way for the high-flown ‘Brando’, the ladykiller; and woe betide anyone who called him anything else.

  Pedalling away in front of Pierre was Aristide Bianchi, the shyest one, the one Pierre saw as Aramis. He told everyone he was a nurse, but really he was still a trainee at Sant’Orsola Hospital. Skinny as a rake, he seldom took his hands out of his pockets, but he had an elegance of his own and when he walked through the streets of the district he stuck out a mile. For that reason they called him ‘Sticleina’, the toothpick.

  Last of all came Piero Capponi, known as ‘Robespierre’. His father Vittorio had been obliged to call him Piero because foreign names were not allowed during the fascist era. But even when he was little, everyone had known him as Robespierre, and that was his real name, because real names are the ones you choose and prefer, not the ones you read in official documents. In the end he had become ‘Pierre’, simpler, and with a touch of the exotic that pleased him. He was twenty-two, eight years younger than his brother, but they were so different that they could have been twice as far apart.

  What he had with Brando, Gigi and Sticleina, on the other hand, was more than friendship. It was an alliance of intent, reinforced by habit. The four of them were a unit, the best dancers in the district, and leaving everyone far behind was almost a mission, like fighting Richelieu’s soldiers and making them see that no one was a match for the filuzzi dancers of the Bar Aurora.

  At that moment, as they headed towards the Pratello, they felt invulnerable and united. Just like the musketeers.

  Communist musketeers, that is.

  Tickets into the Pratello dancehall cost 300 lire, but Pierre and his friends got in for free, because there were people who came just to see them when word got around about where they were going to dance.

  They were in perfect accord with the Bonora Trio. The musicians knew the dancers’ favourite pieces of music, and were happy to play them. The first one was always a mazurka, not too fast, just to warm up. Pierre paired up with Brando, and it was Sticleina’s turn to twirl with Gigi.

  Everyone took to the floor for the mazurka, even the women, who couldn’t usually keep up with the giddy rhythms of those dances. Two or three pieces in, the rhythm started to speed up. Nino Bonora’s concertina, supported by bass and guitar, sounded as though it was never going to stop. By the sixth item on the programme only the musketeers of the Bar Aurora were left on the floor. Shouts of encouragement rose up from the tables, along with applause for the more complex movements. Sticleina, emphasising his womanly way of dancing, started to sway his hips.

  Once the piece was over, the guitarist Aroldo Trigari approached the microphone to announce, ‘Hold on tight now, everybody, this polka is a real earthquake!’

  Bonora launched in at a breakneck rhythm, and the four filuzzi followed the music each on his own, the couples parting and reforming each time the tune came round again. They ran through four different figurations one after the other, and by the fifth the whole hall was breathing in unison, the girls were clutching their tables for fear of being sent flying, so great was the energy with which Robespierre Capponi executed his famous ‘bend-down-and-turnaround’, a pièce de résistance in which his only rival was Neri Raffaele, known as Felino, from Borgo San Carlo.

  The ‘earthquake polka’ was the last piece in the first session. After it, the band played a very calm waltz. The central part of the evening, for devotees, was closer to the liscio, or smooth, style of the Romagna than to real filuzzi. Anyway, no one complained, because this was the opportunity to ask some beautiful girl to dance, and that was what most people were there for.

  ‘Shall we go on the attack?’ asked Gigi, straightening his tie after all that dancing.

  Pierre mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. ‘At least let me get my breath back. Let’s have a drink, then we’ll see.’

  ‘You just stay there, then. We’ll go on ahead and test the ground.’

  Gigi and the others were very well aware that more than one girl had fallen for Capponi’s dark eyes, so they preferred to go on ahead in choosing their dancing partners.

  ‘Are you dancing, signorina?’ said Sticleina, bowing like an experienced ladykiller in front of a curvaceous brunette.

  ‘Can you dance like a man as well?’

  ‘Sure I can, and not just that.’

  Pierre stayed at the bar for at least three or four numbers, sipping a vermouth. He knew very well that there was a girl waiting just for him. Even now, when she was dancing with a guy, she made eyes at him each time she span. Apart from anything else, she moved better than all the rest. Pierre figured she would be a fantastic filuzzi dancer as well, chucked away his cigarette and crushed it beneath his shoe. He crossed the floor as though it were Piazza Maggiore on a Sunday morning, keeping his hand in his trouser pocket, under his jacket, more Cary Grant than ever. Arriving in front of the girl, he offered her his arm and invited her to dance with a glance and the faintest of smiles.

  After the first pirouette he asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Agnese Bernardi.’

  ‘Do you live here in the Pratello?’

  ‘Yes, not far away.’

  Pierre reflected on the rule. If you invited a girl from a different district to dance, after the first number you had to drop her and leave her alone for the rest of the evening. A second dance and it meant you were making your move.

  So, when the music stopped, Pierre tried to take his leave. Just at that moment, whether on purpose or by chance, the girl lost a shoe. As he bent down down to help his partner put it back on, Agnese Bernardi clearly gave the impression of taking longer than strictly necessary. They were still clinging to one another as the band struck up once more, a quick piece that heralded the big filuzzi finale. The girl from the Pratello starting moving in time with the music, and Pierre, after a moment’s hesitation, forgot the rule and started moving along with her. They jumped, swung, swayed and pirouetted: the couple left everyone else standing in terms of rhythm and agility. The whole place was abuzz. She smiled, she was pretty, and she really could cope even at the fastest tempo. Pierre put her to the test, and she responded in perfect harmony. They were still together by the third dance, without noticing, out of the pure pleasure of dancing. For him it was an opportunity to try out the fastest rhythms with a girl rather than Brando, his usual partner. With all the friendship in the world, it was a different thing.