I don’t know what’s bugging me today. I’ve got this beef. Yeah, it’s true I’ll get out in a few days but it’s been hard to put up with all this corruption and I’m in no mood to take any shit from these motherfuckers. A sentence on top of the sentence. Jail isn’t just time. It’s everything else you got to take and it ain’t written down in the sentence. I shouldn’t have let myself get arrested that day. Before getting plugged with a nine caliber I might’ve killed one or two of them and I’d be remembered in the underworld as a guy that had balls. Instead I killed a woman and a kid and everybody sees me as a fucking moron that went off his rocker. Something I got to do is make sure I’m not identified after I die, got to set something up with a cremation outfit. I want to be gone forever. No trace of Raffaello Beggiato must remain. I’m making coffee jailhouse style. You whip up the first drops with sugar till it forms a thick cream. Then the rest of the coffee streams down real slow so it doesn’t go flat and looks just like an espresso from a bar. Then when you drink it you realize it’s fake. Like everything else inside here.
SILVANO
I answered on the sixth ring. I haven’t gotten phone calls for years, except from ballbreaking surveys or some business that absolutely wanted to inform me about the promotions for their products.
“It’s Ivana Stella Tessitore.”
“Buongiorno.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all.”
“I passed by the shop, and the gentleman who is taking your place told me you won’t be at work for a few days. I wondered if by chance your absence might be connected to the publication of the letter.”
“I’m just worn out. The emotional stress . . . you understand.”
“I do understand, perfectly. I’d like to see you again. Perhaps a little company would do you good.”
“I’d love it.”
“Then why don’t you come over for lunch today? My daughter is at the university; we could have a chat in peace and quiet.”
The prisoners’ benefactress sought my company. I didn’t much care for listening to her rubbish, but at the same time I did want to see her again. She still made me curious, and meeting her for lunch was one more opportunity to scope out her life.
On my way to her house I passed by the cleaners. Through the window I saw Daniela waiting on a couple customers. She was smiling and chattering away. That whore was really thick-skinned.
Ivana Stella was elegantly dressed and carefully made-up. She welcomed me with a big smile. “I’m really pleased to see you,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks.
She parked me in the living room and offered me an aperitif. A Negroni. She’d made a carafe of it. I took a look at her glass and saw she’d already had one. That gave me something to think about. The first time I’d been to her house she helped herself to that premium cognac—twice. And when I came over to show her the draft of the letter, she also had a couple drinks. My eyes searched for the cognac among the bottles that stood on a large round tray of antique copper. Just a couple fingers were left. So the consoler of murderers, thieves, and drug dealers didn’t hold back on the alcohol. A weakness that hid some rough patches deep down. That woman had everything. Wealth, a beautiful house, a daughter. And she even allowed herself the luxury of helping inmates. I suddenly stood up, grabbed the carafe, and filled her glass. It was her third.
“This Negroni is really good,” I said with a smile.
The table had already been set. For two. Plates, glasses, cutlery, napkins—everything was the height of refinement. Ivana Stella had good taste. The meal had been cooked by the maid who’d gone out a while ago. I methodically filled her glass. A Friulian white wine with the antipasto and a light red with the codfish.
The woman drank and talked. I listened and made free with the reassuring smiles.
“Drink up, cara. I’m guessing you’ll pour out your soul any minute now.”
And the fact is, in a little while she asked me if we could drop the formality. Then she started telling me about her loneliness. Her husband had left her for a younger woman. Although not more beautiful, she was careful to add. She was all on her own in that big house with a daughter to raise. Fortunately Vera turned out to be a girl with a head on her shoulders. Ivana Stella had been so traumatized when her husband left that she couldn’t build a life with another man. Later she met a friend, a woman who worked as a volunteer in prisons, and she found a new reason to live.
By the end of the meal, two bottles of wine had been emptied, but I’d drunk very little. Ivana Stella started to slur her words and repeat herself. I offered to make coffee. In the meantime, I told her I admired her a great deal for her dedication to her fellow man, and I got a kick from making her blush when I asked how a beautiful woman like her hadn’t found another guy to share her joys and sorrows.
“Tell me something about yourself,” she said as she sat on the couch.
The fool liked hard luck cases, and I was a prime example of the species. All I had to do was mouth a few platitudes, and I won her over. She started telling me how impressed she was by my capacity to understand Raffaello Beggiato’s drama and how she’d like to become my friend. She was pathetic, weak, defenseless. She sure wasn’t made of the same stuff as Siviero and his wife. I would’ve been stupid not to take advantage of her. She deserved it. And she might come in handy later.
“I shall be most honored to become your friend too,” I said as I stood up.
“Are you going?” she asked, disappointed.
“Yes, unfortunately. I have things to do. But I hope to see you again soon.”
At the door, she gave me a big hug. “I’ll phone you tomorrow,” she promised.
At home I read the newspaper. The next day Raffaello Beggiato was going to appear before the Court of Surveillance. The time had arrived to make another visit to the Siviero couple. I waited for them in front of the house.
“Have you come to smash up everything else?” Oreste asked, barely repressing the impulse to jump on me.
“Down, boy,” I commanded. “It belongs to me. I’ll do what I want with it.”
Daniela ignored me. She opened the gate and parked the Smart in the garden.
“You’ve got Beggiato’s money and passport here in the house?”
“I’m not some idiot.”
“Beggiato gets out in a matter of days, and he’ll contact you,” I said. “You set up a meeting at night to hand over the money and passport and then tell me where and when. That day I’ll come by here in the morning to have some fun with your wife. You arrive at lunch time with the bag, and I’ll disappear from your lives.”
Siviero had a long look at me. “I hope so,” he sighed.
RAFFAELLO
That motherfucking attorney general was against it. “It would be pointless to grant the suspension of sentence insofar as Beggiato cannot be cured.” Luckily my lawyer did a stand-up job. He fished out an affidavit from some big-deal professor at the University of Padova who maintained freedom could have a beneficial effect on the cancer. And then he wanted to read out the letter Contin published in the papers but the presiding judge wouldn’t go for it. “It has already been included in the proceedings,” he said, and you could see his balls were twisted. I followed the lawyer’s advice to a T, kept my eyes lowered, even if every once in a while I snuck a peek at the faces of the fucking experts. They were staring at me like dimwits. But I was sly as a fox, didn’t get up their assholes. And then those fuckhead guards. They used the life sentence as an excuse to play Rambo and clap on the handcuffs so tight they hurt like hell. But I didn’t make a peep. Felt like crying from the pain, but didn’t give them the satisfaction. So in a few days I get out and hightail it to Brazil. I’ll cross the French border by train and then in Paris get on the first flight. If the passport is good there shouldn’t be any problems. These days the bulls’re only after Muslims. I’m a paleface with light eyes. I only hope nobody fucks me out of the bag that’s filled with the cash. But that
won’t happen. Thieves don’t rob colleagues. There was a time when prison guards were carabinieri. Those young bastards were utter pigs. But sometimes you’d find a head guard that’d go to the bar and get you a caffè corretto. In the old days. Now the screws call themselves the penitentiary police but they always have an inferiority complex ’cause they don’t do anything but open and close gates and then they act like bastards just so they’ll get noticed by the real cops. While I was at the hearing the mail guy came by and left a letter for me on the peephole. It isn’t from the lawyer and my mother never writes to me. I still haven’t read it. First I’ll eat something. Today pasta with sauce, stew with potatoes, and apple. In jail they always give you the short cuts of pasta. It’s been fifteen years since I ate spaghetti or tagliatelle. By the time they get it from the kitchens to the cell blocks it’d turn into paste. The short pasta is overcooked too but at least it don’t turn into shapeless pap. The sauce is acid, as usual, and they mixed bread crumbs with the grated cheese. So the brigadier in the kitchen can take home a nice piece of parmigiano. But he needs to give some of it to the inmates that work in the kitchen; otherwise this shit don’t flush. They’re the guys that make prison bearable for themselves. At least they eat well. And inside here food is like drugs. Helps you get through the day. I asked to work as a cook too but the warden told me prisoners convicted of murder couldn’t work in the kitchen or the infirmary ’cause they might get the idea to cut or poison somebody that gets on their nerves. Maybe some fat asshole screw. The potatoes’ve melted and the pieces of meat are as hard as marble. Fuck, Raffaello, how much of this slop d’you eat all these years? Now I’ll read this letter. I’m curious as all hell.
Dear Raffaello,
It’s been quite a few years since I wrote to you. I’m back in touch just to say I hope you get out and manage to get better. We had fun once, and it’s a nice memory I still hang on to. I’m working from home now, and one of my steady johns is Silvano Contin. I’m really happy he decided to write that letter to the newspapers. I’m sure it will help you. I wish you all the best.
Giorgia
Giorgia Valente, the choicest piece of ass in the Veneto clubs. And my old flame. But what the fuck am I saying? She stuck with me only ’cause she hoped she’d live la dolce vita. She was just a whore like the rest of them. Still, I liked her. She knew how to have fun. She wrote to me for a definite reason; if not, she wouldn’t go to the trouble. And the message has got something to do with Silvano Contin. The heartbroken widower is fucking my ex. So what? I figured that bastard would go off his rocker, at the very least, what with all the shit that happened to him. Should I be offended? I couldn’t give two fucks. Maybe Giorgia’s trying to tell me to stay on my toes? Why should I? As soon as I get out I beat it to Brazil. This letter belongs in the trash. Now I can finish off the stew. But I’ll cook the apple with a little sugar, real slow, till it gets almost like candy. Shit, the gas canister for the burner’s almost empty. Just enough left for a couple coffees. O.K., I’ll eat it raw. An apple a day keeps the doctor . . . on your ass. Fucking shit! With my cancer I should be eating a ton of apples. Fuck me, I lost my taste for it. And fuck Giorgia Valente too. How old is she now? Forty-four, forty-five. She’s got to be turning tricks at home now; her ass must be scraping the ground. With all the money Contin’s got why isn’t he fucking whores twenty years younger?
SILVANO
I phoned Ivana Stella. Her daughter told me she’d gone to a prison with the other volunteers. I asked her to do me the favor of returning my call.
I stretched out on the couch to review my little speech for the bleeding heart of the prisons. After a short while, I dozed off. I dreamt of Clara. We were talking to Enrico’s teacher. He was saying the boy was the best in the class, but he was so sick. The phone woke me up.
“I wanted to hear your voice. And see you.” I went on the offensive.
“Me too.”
“But maybe that isn’t true.”
“Why?” she asked, alarmed.
“Can I be frank and direct?”
“Please.”
“I feel attracted to you, but I don’t want to make you uneasy. You’re a very beautiful woman, refined, intelligent, sensitive. But I’m just Signor Heels in a Jiffy. Once I was successful, but then tragedy—”
“Silvano, I too feel a strong attraction towards you, and what you do doesn’t matter to me because you’re a special man.”
“You’re special too. When can I see you again?”
“You could come over now, but some friends of Vera’s are here. Is lunch tomorrow O.K.?”
An invitation to lunch, so the daughter won’t be there. And at lunch she can drink a little more because Vera mustn’t be real happy that mamma hits the bottle. I was put off by Ivana Stella’s affected ways, the “you’re a special man” crap. I was special, but not in the sense she imagined. I was finally exercising my right to justice. The judges had also invested me with this power by treating my statement on the theme of forgiveness as a decisive factor. But I didn’t forgive anybody. Not Beggiato, Siviero, Daniela, Ivana Stella. Certainly not her. No “volunteer” had shown up to help me when I was groping blindly, engulfed by the darkness. Much less Signora Tessitore who came to the aid of poor inmates. And now she found me special.
Life is weird. For fifteen years I waited for something to happen, something that might give meaning to my pain, and now I was acting completely within my rights. And God was definitely not pulling the strings. God doesn’t exist, I’m sure of it. Beyond life there’s nothing but death’s dark abyss.
Late in the afternoon I was laying low near the cleaners. Shortly before closing Siviero headed downtown on foot. He went into a bar and started shooting pool with some other mugs of his ilk. That night he wasn’t going home for dinner. I retraced my steps, got into the car, and passed by Ivana Stella’s house, then Daniela’s. I finally went to a place that was deserted at that hour of the night. I walked for a long time between mounds of loose earth. The silence gave me a feeling of peacefulness. Only the howl smothered in my chest produced a muffled, broken noise like the planks on a storm-tossed ship.
The prospect of another meeting had gotten Ivana Stella all worked up. And she must’ve drunk at least two Negroni. When I slipped my tongue in her mouth, it felt like I was licking the bottom of the glass. She answered the kiss like a house on fire. I could’ve taken her to bed right then, but with a woman like her it would’ve been a mistake. Everything in its time. Now was the moment for words.
“Life is really extraordinary,” I said. “I would’ve never imagined that I could fall in love again.”
“I’ve thought about it ever since the first time you came over.”
“I would like to devote my life to your happiness.”
“Oh, Silvano, hug me again, please.”
For a good hour, we kept saying the kind of stupid stuff kids say to each another, trading kisses and caresses. Ivana Stella started to get bolder. She wanted to make love. It was then that I gently pried myself loose from her embrace.
“Not now, my love.”
“But why?”
“I want to be sure about your feelings. In a few days I’ll phone you again, and you can tell me if you truly want to continue seeing me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I was right. You really are special.”
I pulled into a service area on the highway to eat a sandwich. Then I proceeded to the shopping mall just past the toll booth. I carefully chose the things I had to buy and stood in line at the cash register. I didn’t have enough money on me, so I paid with a debit card.
That night at home I received a phone call from Don Silvio, the prison chaplain.
“I wanted to inform you that Raffaello Beggiato will be released tomorrow morning,” he announced solemnly.
“I am pleased.”
“God will reward you for what you have done.”
I hung up, embarrassed by the man’s gullibility. He had dedicated his entir
e life to an illusion.
The next morning I waited for Siviero outside the usual bar. “He gets out today,” I told him. “I’ll phone every two hours to see if he’s contacted you. When you hear from him, tell him to keep his eyes peeled. Superintendent Valiani will have him tailed.”
RAFFAELLO
The beautiful thing about a suspended sentence is nobody checks up on you. You don’t have to go to the police station or expect visits from the bulls. You can go anywhere anytime—you just can’t cross the border. The lawyer hammered this point to make me understand it wouldn’t be kosher for me to skip the country. Who gives a flying fuck. He got paid. ’Nuff said. It ain’t like we’re partners. I took a taxi to mamma’s place. It would’ve been great to stop downtown and take a stroll but everybody knows when you just get out of prison you shouldn’t overdo it. Too much freedom all of a sudden makes you flip out. Mamma’s happy, does nothing but look at me and cry. Fixed me a nice lunch but I can’t eat much. As soon as I went into the kitchen I opened and closed the fridge door at least fifty times. Then I grabbed some ice and had a big glass of vermouth. The only booze I could find. That’s all mamma drinks. I might go out later and get a whiskey at a bar. The phone rings all the time. It’s those fucking journalists wanting to interview me. “How do you feel? Does the cancer hurt? Do you think you’ll meet Signor Contin again before you die?” Motherfuckers. I got to avoid them like the plague. Today the dailies printed photos fifteen years old; I’ll be fucked if they take new ones of me. I’d be recognized on the street and that’s the last thing I want. I won’t even look out the window just to stop some dickhead from immortalizing my handsome face as the sick lifer. Fuck, I can’t believe I’m free. I still have the stink of jail on me. During the taxi ride I kept my nose glued to the window, acted like a kid ’cause it’s one thing to see on TV what’s outside of jail and another thing to see it with your own eyes. The city’s changed, the people’ve changed—all these fucking cell phones—the cars ain’t the same, the bulls are different too, and the place is crawling with them. Now even traffic cops pack guns. What really turned my head was seeing so many blacks and Arabs walking the streeets. I thought they kept them all in jail. There’s always so much Italian snatch. This is the important thing. I’d love to dick a couple of them before moving on to the Brazilian babes but I think I’ll have to pass. Time flies and I got to cross the Atlantic and settle in before the cancer saps my strength. Now it dawns on me I’ve thought of everything ’cept mamma. I didn’t even tell her I’m going to Brazil. I’m thinking it’s best not to tell her; otherwise she’ll lose heart and do everything she can to keep me with her. I’ll just vanish and kiss tomorrow goodbye. Leave her a little cash so she don’t have to work as a maid anymore. Poor mamma, she’ll take it hard but what else can I do? I got to tell her some bullshit story about needing the passport in case they want to put me back inside; that’ll chill her out. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. In a couple days I’ll cut the cord. Tomorrow night I pick up the stuff and then hop the train for Paris. Plus they’re expecting me at the oncologist’s for the chemo. I want to get cured in Rio with nurses that sashsay to a samba beat. Not with medical benefits where they treat you like some bum off skid row. Besides, in a blink they’d know I was a con that got life and they’d treat me like shit.
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