One bar is still open. Inside, four men are sitting around a plastic table, hanging on Uncle Mimmo’s every word.
Uncle Mimmo owns a general store in the neighborhood. He’s always been called Uncle Mimmo, no one remembers why.
* * *
“Fuuuuuuck,” Nuccio says, stifling a laugh. “I’ve seen some dead people, let me tell you, but that’s the deadest motherfucker I ever saw.”
Tuccio is at the wheel of the beat-up Mercedes. He’s driving at high speed. “What the fuck you laughing about?” he says to Nuccio.
“Who? Me? I wasn’t laughing,” Nuccio replies indignantly. “But fuck, did you see the way his head exploded? How the fuck did he get a head like that? It burst like a balloon!” And he laughs.
Tuccio looks at him.
Tuccio isn’t laughing.
* * *
In the bar, after so much has already been said, and everybody’s waiting for Cosimo to say, “Closing time,” Uncle Mimmo says point-blank, “If I’d told him about the crossbow, the sergeant might still be alive right now.” He says it like he’s expressing something that’s been burning him up inside and won’t give him any peace.
“A crossbow?” one of the men asks, surprised.
“What crossbow?” another of the men asks.
The conversation revives.
* * *
In his general store, Uncle Mimmo sells bars of soap, toothpaste, brooms, dusters, shoe polish, sponges, shaving foam, razor blades, bleach, and toilet fresheners, as well as every detergent on the market. He also sells a few different kinds of eau de cologne and aftershave and, of course, DDT and Flit.
Cosimo’s barman Turi says the flies in Uncle Mimmo’s store are such survivors because growing up with all these chemical products has made them immortal.
The store is a little less than six feet wide and a little more than six feet long. Because of the metal shelving, two customers can’t be in there at the same time, one of them’s got to stand aside, and the merchandise is always falling on the floor. To avoid getting up every time to put things back, if there’s somebody in the store and a second customer arrives, Uncle Mimmo says, “Please wait outside, I’ll serve you next.”
The flies live in the section where the fabric softeners are. They form a tight black cluster that sticks to the bar holding up the metal shelf. They’re all over each other, one on top of the other. Eleven and a half inches of flies, as thick as paste, but living and moving. When Uncle Mimmo gets up to check, they scatter in an instant as if they never existed. If a customer passes, though, they keep still and merge into the darkness.
No customer has ever noticed them.
They wait until there’s nobody in the store; then they take off like squadrons, even though they give the impression of only ever being one fly, the same fly. If Uncle Mimmo kills one of them with his newspaper, another comes out of the corner and takes the place of its fallen comrade, perfectly imitating its flight and buzz.
In order not to fall for their tricks, Uncle Mimmo has to keep count of the corpses.
* * *
“If I’d told the sergeant about the crossbow,” Uncle Mimmo goes on, “then the robber would have seen the sergeant talking to me at the cash desk and might not even have come in. There was a crossbow under the counter.”
“There was a crossbow under the counter?” a third man asks.
Uncle Mimmo looks up, slowly. “Every afternoon after lunch,” he says, “I clear the table. After I clear the table, I sit in the armchair, in front of the TV, to get a couple hours’ sleep. I always do that, you know: sit in the armchair in the afternoon, with a blanket over my knees if I’m cold, turn on the TV, and fall asleep.”
The listeners nod, but they’re getting impatient.
“So I can get to sleep easier, you know,” Uncle Mimmo goes on, “I put on the afternoon show on Antenna Sicilia, the one with Salvo La Rosa. Sometimes they have that comedian on, you know, the funny one, but this afternoon he wasn’t on, Commander Fragalà was on.”
“The one who owns the gun shop?”
“The one who sings?”
“That’s the one. First he sang an aria from L’Elisir d’amore, then Salvo La Rosa sat him down on the guest couch and interviewed him about the new pump-action rifles, the ones he just got in. The Commander said things are great in America, you can go into a shop, take a look at what’s on the shelves and in the windows, then go to the salesclerk and say, ‘Wrap up this pump-action rifle for me, please,’ and he wraps it up.”
“It’s true,” Pietro, who’s retired, says. “I saw it in a movie.”
Uncle Mimmo makes a gesture with his hand like he’s saying, What did I tell you? Then he nods thoughtfully. “The Commander complained to Salvo La Rosa that things in Italy aren’t so easy.”
“Of course they’re not easy,” Cosimo says, “but here we have people you can go to who’ll sell you anything, even a submachine gun. The one with the Russian name.”
“Oh, sure,” Uncle Mimmo says. “But who the fuck goes to those people?”
They all make resigned expressions, one with his hands, one with his face, one with his legs.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Tano says. He’s also retired, but helps out in the bar from time to time. “In my opinion, the reason they don’t come to you and ask you to pay protection is because you’ve been in the neighborhood all your life and everyone knows you. Maybe they like you and think they’d be showing a lack of respect if they came and asked you to pay protection.”
“Yes,” Cosimo says, “they think they’re doing us a favor. But look how things end up.”
“Precisely,” Uncle Mimmo says. “So then you gotta think about self-defense. But whaddaya do with no permit to carry a gun?”
“Exactly,” Cosimo says indignantly.
“Anyhow, I was thinking about these things this afternoon, and I decided I had to get hold of something, anything … I don’t know, a knife, a hammer … whatever, because you never know during a robbery … Of course, I’m not saying somebody comes in with a submachine gun, you’re going to pick up a hammer, because then the guy just starts laughing, but let’s say he’s distracted … right?… let’s say he’s distracted … How can you know what might happen during a robbery, maybe one of these things will turn out useful … you never know.”
“It’s getting cool,” Tano says. “Want me to lower the shutter?” Without waiting for a reply, he stands up.
He walks unsteadily, crookedly, on the sawdust that Turi, the barman, has strewn on the ground—it’s more useful than a doormat because the customers never wipe their feet when they come in, and more convenient, because when it stops raining he sweeps up and everything’s clean the way it was.
The noise of the shutter being lowered echoes through the whole neighborhood.
* * *
“Fuuuuuck,” Nuccio says again.
The lights of evening race faster across the windshield.
Tuccio drives in silence, looking in the rearview mirror every now and then and nodding to himself.
* * *
Tano wipes his hands on his frayed pants, rolled at the waist to reveal the white lining all yellowed. He walks behind the bar, takes a bottle of Punt & Mes from the shelf, and slowly returns to the table.
“So I decided to go to the Commander’s shop to see if there was anything you could get without a permit,” Uncle Mimmo resumes, once Tano is back in his chair. “When I got to the shop, I went to the salesgirl and explained my situation. She took out a drawer and set it on the counter with a smile, and you know what was inside? A dummy!” he says, disgusted.
“So now you’re supposed to chase away magpies or what?” Cosimo says, just as disgusted.
“Just like I said! And they make dummies with this red thing around the end of the barrel so you can’t hit anyone anymore.”
“They do it because of the law,” Tano says. “So you can’t do a robbery with a fake gun.”
“Yes,�
�� Cosimo says, “some fucking law. So now robbers only use real guns.”
“Precisely,” Uncle Mimmo replies. “Anyhow, I had to explain it all to her from the beginning. I needed something that wasn’t a real weapon but close enough, that hurt but not too much, in other words a weapon that didn’t need a permit. And then she took out another drawer and set it on the counter and inside there were new guns, all kinds of guns, and so I said, ‘Minchia, signorina, what are these, more dummies?’ She explained they were air guns. Minchia, you know, air guns, right?”
“What are you, a kid on Halloween, that we gotta give you an air gun now?” Cosimo says.
“That’s exactly what I said. So then she explained these guns don’t shoot those little red rubber things. Now they shoot these really hard little bullets and they’re perfect replicas of guns on the market. If you want, you can buy the bullets with a metal core, but they cost more. At thirty feet, she says they make a bruise like this. So I asked her, ‘And what if I buy them with the metal core?’ Just then, the Commander, who’d just finished serving somebody else, came up to us and said, ‘Then the bruise lasts longer. But what the fuck are you buying, Uncle Mimmo?’”
“He’s used to handling real guns, not shit,” Cosimo says.
“Precisely. So then I explained my situation again to the Commander, and he nodded, being an expert in these things. Then he told me I was right, and he’d find something to take care of my problem.”
“That guy knows what he’s talking about,” Cosimo says.
“So he thought about it awhile, and he looked around, and said what I needed was a nice sling. They make them now with this thing you put around the handle to give it more explosive power, and they shoot these colored glass pellets that are very, very accurate, and at thirty feet the bruise they give you is something else.”
“Minchia,” Tano says.
“Wait. As the Commander was turning around to get the sling off the sling shelf, I saw a cardboard box with a colored drawing of a rat with these enormous fangs and a smile on its face. So I asked him, ‘What’s in there?’ And the Commander smiled and said, ‘Minchia, Uncle Mimmo, why didn’t I think of that before?’
“It was a crossbow,” Uncle Mimmo says, spreading his arms wide. “The Commander told me that officially they’re used for killing rats. Though I find that hard to believe, because to kill a rat with a crossbow first you gotta corner it, and that’s the hardest part with rats. Unless, like the Commander said, there are people who like trapping rats with glue to use for target practice!”
“That’s disgusting!” Turi cries.
“Shut up,” Cosimo says, “you don’t know anything about target shooting. And then?”
“Then I went to open up the store, with this nice crossbow all wrapped up under my arm. I sat down at the cash register, I read the instruction booklet, and I put it under the counter stretched really tight and ready to go.”
“Like a hard-on…” Turi says to regain his credibility, and indeed they all smile, except for Uncle Mimmo, whose face grows serious.
“It’s no laughing matter,” Uncle Mimmo says. “You see, when the sergeant came in, I wanted to tell him about the crossbow. Just to show off, you know, to tell somebody who knew from weapons. But I could just see the sergeant saying, ‘Hmmm … let me see that crossbow, Uncle Mimmo … hmmm … don’t need a permit, eh?’ and then taking it away and giving it to the laboratory for analysis, and then after a few months an article coming out in the paper saying they’d made a law that you couldn’t buy these crossbows anymore without a permit. What did I know? So I thought, Better keep it to yourself. So I just said, ‘Good evening,’ to the sergeant and he said, ‘Good evening,’ and went off into the back on the left—where the men’s toiletries are. Thinking about it now, God, thinking about it now, if I’d told him about the crossbow, then maybe the robber would have seen him talking to me at the cash register and wouldn’t even have come in, he’d have put off the robbery, and the sergeant would still be alive.”
Uncle Mimmo shakes his head and looks down, his mournful expression reflected in his Punt & Mes.
“When it’s your turn to go…” Cosimo says.
“Minchia, I don’t want to think about it,” Tano says. “There were pieces of the sergeant’s brain dripping from the deodorant shelf and falling on his face.”
“All right, all right,” Cosimo says, wiping his hands on his pants. “It’s late, time to go.”
* * *
A few hours earlier, Uncle Mimmo had turned on the light at the exact moment when the dark outside was really dark. (The only lighting in the store is from two small naked bulbs but, due to a strange phenomenon he’s never understood, they don’t light anything at all when it’s just starting to get dark.) The sergeant came in, as he always did at that time, and the flies stopped buzzing. Uncle Mimmo said hello, and the sergeant returned his greeting absentmindedly, and walked straight, as he always did, to men’s toiletries.
With his knee, Uncle Mimmo pushed the crossbow farther into the shelf under the counter. The stool he was sitting on rose dangerously on two legs. Uncle Mimmo felt the hard wood of the shelf against his knee, a sign he couldn’t push anymore, and he let himself fall back.
The stool made a sharp noise against the tiles.
The sergeant, lost in thought, heard the noise. He’d already put on his glasses to read the label on a bottle of aftershave, and was looking puzzled. Maybe he wanted to try a different brand. He poked his head out of the corner where the flies were, holding the aftershave in his hand, then disappeared again.
Uncle Mimmo relaxed.
Then the door creaked open and there was the usual rush of air that, Uncle Mimmo knows, continues even when the door is closed again and the customer comes in.
“Please wait outside, and I’ll serve you next,” he managed to say before turning and finding something cold and hard under his nose, and a face in front of his eyes, a face he couldn’t see clearly, being farsighted. The face whispered something. Uncle Mimmo didn’t understand. The face screamed, “The money, old man!” Fuck, Uncle Mimmo thought, a robbery!
He’d never been robbed before. He was seized by a sudden panic. He thought about the crossbow, the sergeant, then nothing … With his free hand, the robber pressed the key that opens the cash register. The register went TLING and then TA-TANG, making the whole counter shake. The sergeant, with another aftershave in his hand, heard the TA-TANG. He looked up, then peered back out of the corner with the flies. He saw what was happening. It was only a split second. He rotated one hundred and sixty degrees, simultaneously taking out his service revolver, gripping it in both hands, and removing himself from the line of fire. He lifted the gun close to his nose and his glasses, pointing upward, his elbows bent and loose but ready for the impact, his back against the wall, or rather against the shelf of the men’s toiletries section. A can of shaving foam fell to the floor with a thud.
Uncle Mimmo heard, in this order: the sergeant shouting something, but too loud for him to understand what; a tremendous bang that exploded in his left ear; a buzz spreading inside his head. He opened his eyes wide as spattered pieces of the sergeant’s brain hit his face.
Like almost everyone, Uncle Mimmo had seen the footage of the Kennedy assassination on TV, with all those little pieces of brain rolling across the trunk of the convertible like foam from the soap in a car wash. At that moment, in the store, absurdly, he had that scene before his eyes, and, equally absurdly, thought it was obvious the President of the United States couldn’t have died with a little red dot on his forehead like the ones the Indian women put on like tattoos. And yet, or so it seemed, even a Neapolitan sergeant (but was he really Neapolitan?) wearing glasses died this way, spattering brain matter all over the place as if he were the President.
The guy who’d fired the shot must have thought something similar, because Uncle Mimmo heard him say, “Fuuuuuck!” Then he saw him run out with his rifle case in his hand and wondered how he’d
managed to put the rifle back in the case so quickly, how he could be so … clear-headed!
“It was a fucking rifle, not a pistol, that’s why he spattered!” Uncle Mimmo said in a loud voice before collapsing onto the stool.
* * *
“And if it hadn’t been for that bang, I’d have recognized the son of a bitch: minchia, he had a face that looked like it had fallen in a baking tray and been put in the oven!” Uncle Mimmo says now on the street, raising the collar of his jacket and saying goodbye to his friends.
“WHERE’D YOU GET THIS MEAT, TONY?”
“Where’d you get this meat, Tony?” At Tony’s barbecue, Uncle Sal is trying to lighten the atmosphere in his own way. “I nearly choked! I told you a thousand times to buy your meat at Tano Falsaperla’s, he’s got family in Argentina!”
“He was closed, Uncle Sal!” Tony replies, too cheerfully. “But you’ve given me an idea, you know? For the next barbecue, I’ll get you a nice asado!”
Uncle Sal smiles, pleased with himself.
The whole family is at the barbecue.
First of all, Tony’s wife, Cettina, in a showy green satin dress, and Sal’s three sisters: Tony and Rosy’s widowed mother, Agata; Carmela, who’s unmarried; and Rosaria, the mother of Alessia, Mindy, Cinzia, and Valentina, a widow but not beyond the shadow of a doubt, in the sense that her husband disappeared and his body has never been found. On the rare occasions when she talks about the missing man, Lullo Caruso, Rosaria never fails to say, “The big fat bastard!” A comment that arouses the legitimate suspicion that Sal Scali was in some way involved in Lullo’s disappearance.
Then there are all the half relatives, relatives through marriage, the children of cousins who emigrated, nephews of dead uncles, husbands of cousins of brothers, grandmothers of somebody, grandmothers in black with shawls, arranged at random around the barbecue like the spots on a Dalmatian … And, last but not least, Alessia, Mindy, Cinzia, and Valentina Caruso.
Tony’s younger sister, Rosy (about fifteen or twenty years younger, you’d say, if you knew Tony’s exact age), is sitting on a wicker couch that she says is killing her stockings. She looks around anxiously.
Who is Lou Sciortino? Page 3
