by Marco Vichi
He patiently waited for Signorini to stop whimpering. When the sobbing was beginning to wind down, he stood up and put the Beretta in his pocket. Pulling Signorini up by one arm, he sat him back down in the armchair.
‘Who killed the boy?’ he asked again, forcing himself to assume a fatherly tone. The young man was trembling, and his eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks wet. He kept his eyes lowered and every so often his chest heaved.
‘Livio …’ he muttered.
‘Ah, our friendly butcher,’ Bordelli said with a shudder, having trouble believing he’d got to the bottom of the whole dirty business.
‘It was … an accident …’
‘Oh, of course it was. You really only wanted to have an evening of light-hearted entertainment.’
‘It’s true … it was an accident,’ Signorini whined.
The inspector started pacing back and forth on the Persian rug, hands in his pockets, never once turning his back to Signorini.
‘You’d better tell me the whole story from the beginning.’
‘I need a little morphine,’ the young man whispered, jaw trembling.
‘If you tell me everything, I’ll let you shoot up all the morphine you want afterwards.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘All right … I’ll tell you everything … I’ll tell you everything …’
‘I’m listening,’ the inspector said softly, showing patience. He calmly lit a cigarette, eyes following a smoke ring as it floated slowly up to the ceiling. Signorini was panting, trying to summon the courage to begin. He kept running his hands over his eyes, his forehead, his hair. At last he made up his mind to talk, and he started with the very distant past … It was a confession, but it closely resembled a personal unburdening that had been a long time coming …
Italo Signorini’s mother died when he was only a few months old, like the protagonist of the novel he was writing. His father had several mistresses but never remarried. Italo met Panerai, Beccaroni and Sercambi at Forte dei Marmi in the summer of ’53, when he was just under fourteen years old. He had recently discovered the guilty pleasures of masturbation, and during those moments his fantasies were peopled only by men. Young girls meant nothing to him.
He used to spend holidays with his father at the Villa Roma Imperiale, which belonged to his paternal grandparents, who in summertime used to go away on long journeys. That summer, at the start of the holidays, he and his father met the three men, friends since early adolescence, on the beach. A butcher, a lawyer and a secondary-school Italian teacher. At the time Panerai, Beccaroni and Sercambi were just over thirty, while Italo’s father was a few years older.
The three friends were often invited over to the villa. They would have elaborate dinners, play billiards, poker and tennis on the private court. With the addition of his father, they became a rather harmonious foursome. Young Italo was always hanging around with them, enjoying the company of these men who had the power to lighten the moods of his normally gloomy, severe father. The three new friends often used to joke around with the boy, patting him on the head and slapping him on the back.
The carefree days went by, each one better than the last.
One evening Italo’s father told him that the following morning he had to leave to settle an annoying row that had erupted in one of his textile factories, and he had asked his friends to keep his son company while he was away. He drove off, leaving Italo on the beach with the three friends. They had lunch at the villa then all went into the billiards room, where Panerai offered to teach the boy how to play the ‘stick-and-balls’ game. He leaned over him from behind to show him how it was done, whispering his instructions directly into his ear, and running his hands over the boy’s naked arms to direct the shot. The other two were playing at another table, watching the scene and smiling. Italo realised that he didn’t mind the contact at all, and that actually he felt a strange void in his stomach, as he used to feel when on a swing as a little boy. Panerai was laughing and every so often inserting his hand into the boy’s bathing suit and tickling him. Italo wasn’t very good at billiards, and after a while Panerai suggested they play another game that was a lot more fun. They had to take all their clothes off, and then one of them had to put on a blindfold and try to identify the others by touching their bodies. They all agreed to play, Italo included, who felt excited and proud to be allowed to play a grown-up game. Before they started, Panerai told the boy that never in a million years should he tell his father about the game they were about to play, or they wouldn’t be his friends any longer. Italo swore on his own head that his father would never find out. He knew how to keep a secret; he was hardly a little boy any more. All right then, said Panerai, that’s very, very good, I like a boy like you. You’re a very good boy, and worthy of our friendship.
They stripped down naked, drew lots, and the one whose turn came first was none other than him, young Italo. They blindfolded him, and each came forward, one at a time, to be touched. Breathing heavily, they would guide his hands between their legs, where Italo always found a surprise. He sensed that he was doing something forbidden, and this fact excited him and made him laugh. Then Beccaroni said they could play another game that was even more fun. He knelt in front of the boy and started licking him, as the others egged him on with obscene little comments. Italo felt himself sinking into an unknown world where pleasure and fear disturbingly merged. Soon the game took strange new turns, and he found himself bent over the edge of the billiards table. You’re a big boy now, they said, you’re ready to learn some new things.
Italo tried feebly to resist, vaguely frightened by the transformation of the three men, who had abandoned their usual politeness for a much ruder manner … But the desire to discover what there was beyond caresses held him prisoner. The moment he felt himself being penetrated by Sercambi, great pain became suffused with unimaginable pleasure. It wasn’t just a physical thing, but rather as if he had at last found his place in the world. Yes, that was it … He liked feeling submissive, dominated. Sercambi whispered into his ear to rebel, to try to break free, that would make the game more fun. So to please him Italo squirmed and struggled, pretending he was being raped, and his own pleasure increased. Sercambi let out a stifled groan and collapsed on top of him. Beccaroni was very fast, and then it was Panerai’s turn. He’d saved himself for last, he said, smiling, because his thingy was huge and he wanted the road cleared before him. He proved to be the most violent of them all, and he took for ever. Italo started to feel tremendous pain, tried to rebel in earnest, crying and kicking. But Panerai wouldn’t hear of it and kept murmuring sweet and lewd things, crushing the boy’s head against the billiards table and hitting him hard. As he was reaching orgasm he squeezed Italo’s neck almost to the point of strangling him, then detached himself with a wheeze and slapped his bottom, whispering that he was truly a beautiful boy. You hurt me, Italo said to him, and he started to put his clothes back on with a crushing sense of guilt. I guess I was maybe a little naughty there, said Panerai, caressing the boy’s cheek with a sweaty hand. Friends again? Now we’ll all go to Viareggio for some good ice cream. But first we must sign a pact in blood among men, he added, and we must take our secret to the grave with us. And they turned off the lights, to make the whole thing seem more solemn. Panerai heated the tip of a penknife over a candle flame and they each held out a finger to be pricked. They mingled their blood, and Sercambi proposed sealing the oath with a sign of the cross.
Italo kept his word and said nothing to his father. A strange feeling of frenzy had remained inside him. His father, however, didn’t absent himself again for the rest of the summer, and there were only rare occasions for brief little games, though these were equally thrilling. They took place out at sea, in beach huts, and in the dark corridors of the villa.
The three friends returned to Florence in early September, promising to stay in touch, and Italo was left alone with his secret. He knew with absolute certainty t
hat he would never say a word about it to his father. It was a matter that concerned him and him alone.
Despite their promises, he didn’t see the men again for several years, not even during the summer holidays. Little by little, the memory of that afternoon began to fade and nearly vanished under the weight of other experiences.
A few years later his father suddenly died, making Italo the heir to a vast fortune. He was rich, and free, at long last.
One spring morning when he was twenty-two, he ran into Beccaroni by chance on a street in the centre of town. They greeted each other with a touch of embarrassment, sizing each other up, but it took only a few moments for the old familiarity to return. You certainly have grown, said Beccaroni; you’ve really become a good-looking lad. Ah, so your father died? I’m so sorry. Listen, what do you say we get together with our other friends? Even tonight, if you like. They exhanged telephone numbers, knowing full well why they were doing so, and that same evening they met up again. The merry brigade from Forte dei Marmi was reunited, and the amusements began almost at once. Italo discovered to his surprise that Sercambi was not a professor of Italian but a monsignor of the Episcopal Curia. He would never have imagined it from the way he remembered the man playing poker and billiards. But deep down he found it amusing.
One evening they introduced him to Gattacci, who shared with the three friends a nostalgia for the good old days. Italo wasn’t the least bit interested in politics but was seeking only familial warmth and sexual amusement. Aside from certain choreographical variations, the essence of their games remained the same as the very first time. He was on the bottom, and they were on top, in every sense. Submission was the very greatest pleasure for him. The others, too, liked him best this way. Gattacci only rarely took part in their soirées, and on those occasions he never joined the fray. He preferred to stand apart, watching and masturbating.
Panerai’s and Beccaroni’s families were of course unaware of anything and simply thought they were out playing poker with friends. Sercambi had no wife to answer to, being a priest, and Gattacci had never married. In short, it was smooth sailing for their little banquets of sex, champagne and a smorgasbord of drugs.
After a couple of years of this, the three friends began to grow bored with the usual arrangements, and more and more mention was made of the need to find a new ‘female’. Italo was terrified of being left alone and abandoned, and to keep the little group from disbanding he offered to try to procure new young flesh, boys who hustled for a living and even kids who only occasionally sold themselves just to raise money for their next meal. The others greeted this proposal with enthusiasm, but Beccaroni wanted to establish a few safety rules to protect this secret part of their lives. He liked to make a show of his professional skills and started to dictate rules. No one must ever know their true identities. A scandal could sweep them away for ever, especially Monsignor Sercambi, who had made morality his personal banner. Therefore anyone recruited for their ‘games’ had to be blindfolded before being escorted into and out of the villa. Italo then had to get his hands on a very commonplace model of car, a Fiat 500 or 600, with which to pick up boys off the street. And, most importantly, during the fun and games they had to use nicknames and wear carnival masks. Beccaroni’s suggestions were unanimously approved, and the new pact of secrecy further consolidated their group.
Italo bought a second-hand white Fiat 600 and got down to work at once. A man of independent means, he could spend all the time he wanted on these matters. To make his search more interesting, he would sometimes imagine he was living an adventure. At times he was a secret agent looking for boys to recruit as spies to send on dangerous missions. At other times he was a film director looking for actors. But what he liked best was to view the whole thing as a mission to save their group and therefore himself. He couldn’t stand the idea of ever being separated from the others. The bonds between them must remain unbreakable, eternal. The four men were his family, the only one he’d ever had.
He would go out looking for boys on the street, abandoned waifs willing to sell their bodies in full for a few thousand lire. Such quarry was rare, unfortunately. While waiting for a stroke of luck they made do with a low-class young hustler they’d snagged in the Parco delle Cascine. The job of picking him up would sometimes fall to Beccaroni or Panerai as well, but Italo’s role never varied. He on the bottom, the others on top.
One time he managed to bring home a gypsy boy of sixteen, as beautiful as the moon. Things didn’t quite work out, and they had to take him by force. After the performance the young gypsy made a terrible scene, threatening to kill them with his knife and screaming that he would call the carabinieri. To calm him down, they had to stuff him with money. They’d dodged a bullet, but the whole experience had become a sort of obsession for them, an ideal to aim for. Violence was the most exciting thing of all.
Italo had been more frightened than the others by the gypsy boy’s threats. He suggested they move their parties to another house, fearing that, despite their precautions, one of the boys might be able to identify his villa. Until they found a new venue, they should suspend their search.
It was Panerai who resolved the problem, renting for little expense an apartment in Via Luna quite appropriate for their purposes. It had the only door giving on to a small, hidden piazza, and there was a canopy roof covering the doorway that prevented anyone from the surrounding buildings from seeing who went in and out. There was even a cellar, with a door at the top of the stairs and another at the back. It was in that basement room that they outfitted their torture chamber: a bed, a rug, a few pieces of antique furniture, and a big bronze bust of Mussolini. No sound made in there could be heard outside. They’d even conducted a test: two of them locked themselves up in the cellar and started screaming at the top of their lungs. Nothing was audible outside, not even if one pressed one’s ear to the door giving on to the street. They all shared the rental expenses and each had a set of keys.
By this time there were no more obstacles, and Italo resumed wandering about the city in search of meat for the butcher’s block. He tried hard to look for younger and younger boys, knowing that this would please the others. He found an orphan who’d run away from an orphanage, a nasty little urchin just released from juvenile prison, a poor abandoned boy who lived in the cellar of a building on the edge of town, and even a mentally disabled lad. He would take them to Via Luna like so many pounds of beef and feed them to the lions. It didn’t happen too often, two or three times a year at the most. The rest of the time they made do with the usual boys picked up at the Cascine.
Then came that accursed day in October. It was raining buckets. Italo had gone to Fiesole, invited to supper by the adminstrator of his estate, an old Jew who’d been a friend of his father’s and had miraculously escaped deportation. But he’d got the day wrong, and the trustee’s wife told him that her husband was in Rome. Italo apologised for the oversight and left. On his way home he happened to go down Viale Volta. In that downpour there were hardly any other cars on the street. At one point he noticed a boy drenched to the bone and running along the pavement, his coat pulled up over his head and a satchel slung behind his back. He instinctively slowed down, saw the child turn on to an uphill street, and followed behind him from a distance. Every so often the boy would stop running to catch his breath, then start up again. He crossed a deserted little square and ducked down a narrow alley between the very high wall of the Parco del Ventaglio and the façade of a large building with iron bars over the windows. At a certain point the boy slipped on the wet asphalt and fell flat on his face. When Italo pulled over to help him, he was crying like a baby. He tried to comfort him and managed to persuade him to get in the car. They were both dripping wet.
Italo didn’t know yet that he would take him to Via Luna, couldn’t even imagine it. He wasn’t looking at one of their usual little wretches; this was a rich boy, clearly. Then he suddenly thought with a shudder: nobody saw me. He imagined his friends’ delight
at the sight of such a catch, and that was enough to make up his unhappy mind. He stood there motionless in the downpour …
I’ll take you straight home, he said, but first you must stop crying. You certainly wouldn’t want your parents to see you in such a state, would you? You’re a proper little man by now, no? What’s your name? Giacomo? What a nice name. Who’s your father? Really? You’re the son of Pellissari the barrister? I know your father, I know him quite well. Where do you live? Oh, of course I know where Via Barbacane is, my old girlfriend lives there. A blonde girl, with green eyes. Her name is Sara, do you know her? No? Well, isn’t that strange. And you, do you have a girlfriend? Of course you do. How could you not? You certainly needn’t feel embarrassed to say so. Are you cold? Soaked to the bone as you are, you’d better be careful or you’ll get a sore throat. Ah, but I’ve got some powder for sore throats. It’s a little bitter, but you’ll feel better at once. It’s a medicine made by monks, who know about these things. You know what? I’m going to give you some, as a present. It’s really expensive, you know. But I’m happy to give you some. Here, just do as I do. Lick your finger, swirl it around in the magic powder, then suck it like a sweet … Like this, see? Come on, now it’s your turn. Yes, just like that. There’s a good boy. Now suck. What did I tell you? It’s pretty bitter, but good medicine is always bitter …
Sigorini stopped talking and buried his face in his hands. The chime of the clock startled him, but he did not remove his hands from his face. Bordelli had listened to his tale without breathing, feeling sick to his stomach. Poor Giacomo. Fate had played all her cards in delivering the boy into the arms of death … If it hadn’t been raining so hard, if his mother’s car hadn’t broken down, if his father hadn’t got stuck on the Viali because of an accident, if a perverse, drug-addicted young man hadn’t gone to lunch on the wrong day …
