Wu Ming Read online

  ‘But you see,’ replied Pierre without looking up, ‘it’s a whole collection of things. The last letter arrived in March, just a few lines, bad news . . . Then nothing for ten months and now this business about Djilas.’

  ‘Was your father on his side?’

  ‘Well, yeah, something like that, although over the past few years he’d got up a few people’s noses. He said he’d been fired, he said people got riled at seeing an Italian getting important jobs to do.’

  The professor tamped down the tobacco in his pipe. The flame from his lighter revived the embers, and his lips smacked as he took rapid puffs.

  ‘Don’t you think he would have come back to Italy if things had got really bad?’

  ‘Well, you see, things here aren’t that much better, in fact they’re no better at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, at the end of the day he’s a “traitor”, you know? On the Yugoslavian front in ’43, he quit the army, he killed an officer and joined the partisans. Here in Italy they’d stick him in jail. At least if he had the Party on his side, he might be able to manage for a few years, but no, he’s a “Tito-Fascist”, as they say, his comrades over here are leaving him there to rot.’

  The jazz stopped, and the needle clicked at the end of the record. Fanti got up to turn it over, and after a moment’s hesitation the Count Basie Orchestra started up again. Outside it had started snowing.

  ‘As to the Party,’ the professor continued, ‘Togliatti and Tito will soon make peace, now that Uncle Joe has gone. This Djilas business demonstrates as much: Tito wants to go back to the Russians, so he’s abandoning everyone who criticised the Soviet Union.’

  ‘To put it briefly: my father has never been on the right side,’ Pierre observed with a half-smile. He swallowed down his last mouthful of tea. He took from his satchel some pieces of paper and the pen that Angela had given to him. A lick of his finger as he looked for his most recent notes.

  ‘Here we are.’ Then, in English, ‘We go to the cinema and after we have a drink, I’ve underlined after but I can’t remember why.’

  ‘Because it’s a mistake: you should have said and then we have a drink. Write it out correctly, you’ll find it easier to remember.’

  Renato Fanti had a perfect command of English. He had lived in London for more than ten years, and only came back in ’47 after Italy became a republic, three years after the death of his wife. Now he taught at a scientific secondary school, but before the war he had been a professor of literature at Bologna University. They had met at evening classes. Pierre had taken them to get his lower secondary school diploma. He had immediately been struck by the suave and rather unconventional gentleman. He knew the world, cinema and music. He had strange, almost manic, interests. And he taught courses like this because he was passionate about them, certainly not out of necessity. That was why he appreciated Robespierre’s desire to distinguish himself, to know things, to embrace life.

  Pierre remembered the moment on the course when Fanti had talked about A Streetcar Named Desire. His astonishment at finding that someone else knew the film, and the day he had given him a ticket for Rashomon. Then the idea of English lessons, and the discovery that the professor had lost his wife just as he had lost his mother. The same illness: tuberculosis.

  Down at the Section they didn’t approve of his friendship with the professor. An anti-fascist, certainly, who had been removed from the university because he loved American literature too much and the blackshirts too little. But they called him bourgeois, and a political cynic.

  Certainly, Fanti wasn’t a comrade, and he wasn’t a member of the working class either. He sided neither with Moscow nor with the imperialists. Perhaps he was an anarchist, who could tell, it was almost certain that he didn’t vote. Where books were concerned, he wasn’t scared of the alleged ideas of the authors, and he remained a great admirer of John Fante even though the communist newspaper La Rinascita said he was halfway to being a Nazi.

  Once he’d finished Dos Passos, he would have to ask the professor to lend him something by Fante.

  Chapter 10

  Bologna, Sunday, 24 January

  She leaned forward between the front seats, and pointed the driver towards the tree-lined avenue on the right.

  The trunks of the poplar trees disappeared into the pile of snow on the sides of the road, and the car wheels splashed muddy puddles on the side windows. Angela had put on her high-heeled shoes specially, hoping to use them as an excuse to persuade Ferruccio not to go for a walk.

  The usher recognised Signora Montroni the moment he saw her come in, and immediately sent for the nurse who looked after her brother.

  Angela wasn’t very fond of Villa Azzurra, but at least it wasn’t a mental hospital. After the war, in the first few months of ’48, Ferruccio had been given two weeks’ respite in a psychiatric hospital. The memory of that place still made her shiver. Screams, bodies trapped in absurd positions, lakes of piss on the floor, smells that would turn your stomach. Until one day she had gone into her brother’s room and found him strapped to his bed with belts. It had taken three orderlies to keep her from untying them. Another few moments and they would have confined her as well, because she wouldn’t stop weeping and crying. The next day she had persuaded her boyfriend, Odoacre, to assume legal responsibility. Ferruccio had come home.

  ‘So, how are things?’ Angela asked the nurse, as if reading from a script. She asked him the same question every time she came, and she knew the reply as well. ‘Everything’s fine, Signora Montroni, we’re making progress.’

  ‘. . . he’s having a bit of trouble sleeping, he wakes up, he wants to have his breakfast at three o’clock in the morning, he insists on having cigarettes, then during the day he settles down and hardly creates any problems.’

  ‘He settles down.’ ‘He doesn’t create problems.’ A way of saying that his new tranquilliser was working. They were very pleasant at the Villa Azzurra, and Ferruccio, Dr Montroni’s brother-in-law, was treated with the greatest respect. And Marco, the nurse, was a fine person, you could tell that he was fond of Ferruccio. But there was nothing to be done: in there, ‘being well’ meant ‘not creating problems’. If her brother changed and hit someone, that meant he was ill. If he spent all day in the garden, at three degrees below zero, staring at the clouds, then everything was fine, he was well.

  ‘If he’s not on the swing near the fountain, we’ll find him under the cypress tree, on his usual seat,’ said the nurse, opening the glass door giving on to the park.

  A few old men were defying the cold. They were walking along the avenue of statues on the arms of their children or grandchildren. An elderly lady with half her face wrapped in bandages was engrossed in some unlikely gardening work, while two men sat chattering on a stone bench, beneath a yew tree sprinkled with snow. As she passed them, Angela noticed that they were talking to themselves.

  ‘Hi! Got a cigarette?’ said Ferruccio without turning round, when the crunch of dry leaves announced the arrival of his sister.

  ‘Hi, Fefe,’ Angela put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Come on, the taxi’s waiting for us outside.’

  ‘Are we going for a walk?’

  ‘I’m not wearing the right shoes, Fefe, we’d at least have to stop by at the house.’

  An arm swung through the air to dismiss the suggestion. ‘No, no. Let’s stay here, then. Let’s stay here.’

  ‘But you’re here every day, I’m sorry, always shut up in the building,’ Angela objected, and then realised why her brother was so reluctant. ‘Odoacre isn’t at home, he had to meet a friend, he’s gone out.’

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ asked Ferruccio, rising to his feet, and miming the gesture of someone smoking. Angela handed him the pack.

  ‘Can I keep it, really?’

  Angela gave a resigned nod. It always took a while before Ferruccio let himself go. At least an hour or so, then he became distracted, lost his thread, stopped asking for cigarettes, or asking the time, or why on earth you had come to get him. Once that was over it was like being with a normal person, apart from the fact that sometimes his replies were a little off kilter, and he tended to change the subject without warning.

  The taxi driver had gone to sleep. Angela knocked on the window, and he gave a start as though he had been woken at the dead of night. He raised his hand in apology and hurried out to open the door.

  ‘I told my wife, I told her not to give me fried food when I’ve got to go to work, but she doesn’t understand. Sooner or later there’s going to be an accident and then, no, well, that is, that’s all we need, when I drive I’m wide awake, but God almighty, I’m losing customers.’

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ Ferruccio began the moment he sat down.

  ‘A cigarette? Yeah, of course, why not?’

  ‘Fefe, why do you need a cigarette?’ Angela intervened. ‘I just gave you a whole pack!’

  But the driver had already passed a Chesterfield over his shoulder, and Ferruccio had pounced on it straight away. The good thing was that he didn’t smoke. Every Monday, in Villa Azzurra, he did the rounds of the rooms, offering cigarettes to the patients, to the nurses, to the doctors. They all smiled at him, they thanked him, and he felt happy.

  ‘Why did you come and get me today?’ he asked again.

  ‘Because it’s Sunday. Don’t I come and get you every Sunday?’

  ‘Yes, but last time your friend came too.’

  ‘Teresa? She can’t come every time.’

  ‘Can’t she? Shame, I really like your friend. You must tell her. She’s nice, you know. As far as I’m concerned you can stay at home if you’re busy, send Teresa to see me, we can go to the cinema, drink some hot chocolate, and I’ll be fine, really fine.’

  He was almost shouting, very excited at the idea. Angela would just have been irritated by his speech if she hadn’t known that Ferruccio had a precise reason for saying these things. And it wasn’t that he preferred Teresa to her. In fact, he knew very well why it was that Angela sometimes left him with Teresa on Sundays. And because he didn’t much care for his brother-in-law, he was pleased that his

  sister was enjoying herself a bit.

  ‘So you’ll tell your friend, yes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I really like her. You’ve got to tell her.’

  ‘Fine, Fefe, I’ll tell her as soon as I see her.’

  They sat there in silence for a few minutes. A dense group of people were chatting in front of the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, while others, beneath the portico, made their way to mass. Little boys were throwing snowballs under the skeletal lime-trees in Piazza Aldrovandi, while their parents laid siege to a patisserie. When they reached the towers, the taxi turned left into Via Castiglione.

  Odoacre’s house was beyond the lower tower, where the road widened, allowing a glimpse of the keep of the old city walls. Beyond that boundary, the road climbed into the hills, a refuge for the very rich, in their luxury villas, and for unmarried couples, locked in their cars or lying in the grass.

  Angela paid the driver and ran to the door, while Ferruccio was already blocking the path of their neighbour from the floor below to ask for his umpteenth cigarette.

  The sun was peeping through the clouds, and it was less cold. She thought that she might still have time to change her shoes and take her brother to the Margherita Gardens. A Sunday without a stroll was not going to put him in the best of moods. And it wasn’t just that he needed to walk about and get some fresh air; for that, the park at Villa Azzurra would have done, and it was right on his doorstep. But without taking a nice walk among other people, how would Fefe ever collect the forty or fifty cigarettes he needed to hand out on Monday?

  Chapter 11

  Statement given on 25.1.1954 to Police Commissioner Pasquale Cinquegrana by Salvatore Pagano of unknown parents, suspected of the theft of an expensive television set of American manufacture from the military base of the Allied forces in Agnano, Naples

  Fine, I get you. You’re saying someone saw me down at the base. Agnano, I mean. The Allied base in Agnano. But what does that mean? They might just have made a mistake, you know how it is in the dark, you think you’ve recognised a friend and instead it’s someone completely different. There, that’s what must have happened. What do you think? Loads of people can tell you I was at the party. I told you about the party last time, Epiphany party. At the Santa Teresa orphanage. Sure, giving presents to the little souls, why not? You can ask Sister Giuliana, if you want, it wasn’t dark there, she looked me right in the eyes, and we talked. And Sister Maddalena was there as well, you can ask her too. You’re not going to tell me that two nuns are going to lie to you, they’re the brides of Christ, you know the sisters, all prayers and good works, they don’t know what a lie is, or rather, don’t get me wrong, they do know, but they think that if someone lies the Madonna weeps, really, that’s what they used to say, you know what happens if you tell lies?

  They brought me up. The nuns, I mean. Sister Giuliana and Sister Maddalena together. You can check, up until the age of thirteen I lived in the Santa Teresa Children’s Home, because in the end my mother had barely enough money to live, poor thing, and with her job, if you get me, a child was a heavy burden to carry. As to my father, well, I won’t say anything about him. Brothers and sisters? I expect I had a few of them as well, but no one’s ever told me.

  So there you are, when you go to the nuns, ask them, ask them if I’m a criminal, as you put it. They’ll tell you no lies, you know that. Salvatore Pagano? He’s a good lad, that’s right, always around the horses, at the betting, but of course he is, he’s got a living to earn. Because the nuns aren’t so keen on betting either. If someone bets too much it makes St Teresa weep. That’s what they used to say. Every sin has its weeping saint, and the more serious the sin the more important the saint. But I’m sorry, I was talking to you about the nuns. Salvatore Pagano? He’s never stolen anything, that’s what they would tell you, apart from the odd sweet and, all right, maybe the odd cigarette and once, but just once, a bottle of wine from the cellar, but a television, that’s too much, and where would he put a television? No, no, Totore is a good lad, that’s what they would tell you.

  And then, look, to prove to you that I really mean it, like in the confessional, apart from the sweets and the cigarettes and the bottle of wine, that time, but only that one time, ok, there was one other thing. And I don’t think the sisters would tell you this, because they were also, in this case, you know what I’m talking about, right? And this is really the most serious thing that I’ve ever done, my intentions were good, I can assure you of that, a decent thing, yes, sir, because the sisters would never have let me do it otherwise, I was still living half with them at the time. Yes, half, in the end, half in half out, in the daytime I was left to myself, and in the evening I went back to them to sleep. I was thirteen at the time.

  I told you, didn’t I, that there are some friends, not many of them, and other ones as well who just know me as Totore ’a Maronna? No, no, don’t worry, I’m not changing the subject again. It has something to do with this serious but decent thing that I did a long time ago, that thing with the nuns. Right, so I was telling you, that’s what they called me, Totore ’a Maronna, because I, not on my own, right, but with other people, I made the Madonna weep. Because some lies were told, you say? That’s a manner of speaking. No, I’ve never made those Madonnas weep by telling lies. They really did weep. That is, not really, it wasn’t a real miracle, it was a lie, but they were weeping, goodness me, haven’t you worked it out? I’ll try and put it more clearly, ok: those people I was with, they used to help some other people, some very important people, big nobs. Those big nobs went around loads of different villages around Naples, places like Acerra, Marano, Afragola, they talked about their stuff, they did propaganda, they told people about their plans. And when these people, and almost everyone was still there, down below the stage, and those big nobs were talking up on the stage, then we would turn up. That is, the other people and me. And it’s not as if I had to do a lot, they would send me into the church in the village, along with the parish priest, he was with us as well, and after a while I had to run out like a madman saying I had seen the Madonna weeping, that it was a miracle, quick!, an old woman who was with me had fainted with fear. And those other people who were with me had put a water pump inside the little statue of the Madonna, and she really was crying, that is, not really, it wasn’t a miracle, but in the end it looked as though she was crying. But other times you didn’t have to, it was enough for the people in the village to see the boy and the little old woman saying yes, the Madonna had wept, they had seen it with their own eyes, while that big nob was saying that we had to vote for him, put your cross on the cross, otherwise no Madonna, no Italy, people would come who ate babies and . . . Don’t you want to hear this story? Do you know it already? Fine, fine, that’s all I’m going to say, I told you it was pretty serious, but I wanted to tell you everything, like in the confessional, but it was those people who really introduced me to the nuns and told me that in the end there were lies and lies, and that was a lie for a good end, you must have told white lies yourself, this was one of those, and it was good because by telling them we saved Italy in ’48, me and those others . . . And fine, you’re not interested, I’d worked that out, I’ll stop in a minute, but that was why some of my friends, but not many, and others as well, call me Totore ’a Maronna – Salvatore of the Madonna. I kind of prefer Kociss.

  But if you don’t want to hear this story, I’ll tell you once again that I really have nothing to do with this business about the American television. And that stuff with the Madonna really is the most serious thing I’ve ever done.

  The 5,000 lire, you say? What 5,000 lire? I had it in my pocket? Well, yeah, of course, 5,000 lire, but it’s mine. And you think that if I’d sold someone an American television they’d only have given me 5,000 lire? That television was worth twenty times that, at least. But it seems strange to you that someone like me is going around with 5,000 lire in his pocket. And fine, I already told you that the nuns don’t like it, but I bet on the horses. May Saint Teresa forgive me, and whenever I win, I make some money. And you know how it is, I’m always at the racecourse, and you can make a killing up there, you do your bit, you place a bet for the gentleman who wants to sit comfortably where he is, and that’s how you make a bit of money. But not as much as that, 400 or 500 lire max. I won those 5,000 lire. At the Sunday Grand Prix, I think we had three, I bet on Monte Allegro, everyone said Ninfa was going to win, and instead it was Monte Allegro. You know, Agnano is my second home, or perhaps my first one even, and I really know horses, and Ninfa had had bad colic the day before, while Monte Allegro was in great form. The totaliser had him at 10‒1, you can check, and I bet all my savings on him, 500 lire, that’s exactly what happened.