Matt waited until the wheel started turning, and then instructed his interpreter to take over. The latter stepped up to the loudspeaker. His voice echoed over the whole square. He issued a warning to the public: there was no threat to the inhabitants of Cholong, and everything would go quite smoothly as long as there was no resistance to the actions of this small group of Americans – he didn’t quite know how to describe them, and the word “delegation” came to mind. As well as this, there would be a reward of two hundred thousand euros for anyone who helped capture the American writer known as Frederick Blake, dead or alive. During the announcement, Chi-Chi and Guy passed around the notorious Times article about the Manzoni trial, which they had photocopied and were now distributing like a tract. Finally Matt told the interpreter to drive around the town making the same announcement from the candyfloss van.
There were some, however, who stepped forwards, wanting some explanations about this “state of siege.” Matt suggested to Hector and Greg that it might be an idea to prove that they meant business. The latter, holding their MP5 9mms, asked the doubters to move aside as fast as possible, and then emptied their guns into the local artists’ stands. Vases and clay pots, glazed sculptures, glass lampshades – all flew up in thousands of pieces. Seascapes and portraits were perforated through and through under the helpless gaze of their artists. The charity stall, which Maggie was in charge of, was reduced to dust. There followed a terrified stampede out of the square; the music and the roundabouts fell silent, giving way to cries of panic which took a long time to die down. After a while, all that could now be heard was the rusty metallic creak of the baskets on the big wheel going round and round.
*
Giovanni Manzoni had never suffered such a cruel reversal, even at the height of the wars between the families.
His work had been destroyed before being completed. It had been still-born.
All those hours he had spent at work, pondering every comma, carefully considering each verb before using it. He had even gone so far as to open a dictionary. All the love that had gone into this work, the fruit of his loins, the mirror of his soul, the song of his heart, all gone for ever. All that determination to seek out the truth about himself, without hiding anything – he had been offering his readers the gift of his entire life. And now it had all been reduced to dust in a few seconds, dust and rubble.
This was worse than looking death in the face. Fred felt as though he had never even existed.
Earlier on, listening to his wife’s curses, he thought he had touched rock bottom. Now he understood that all pain is relative. You think you’ve lost everything, and then you find there’s so much more to lose. In less than an hour, Fred had buried his future, and a moment later his past had disappeared as well.
As he felt his strength ebbing, he suffered a strange hallucination.
A cohort of zombies filed through the room, men of all ages, with caved-in skulls, bodies riddled with oozing holes, drowned men with eyes popping out of their heads, a great parade of all the victims, direct and indirect, of Giovanni Manzoni and his gang. These ghosts bent over Fred, who lay prostrated on the floor, and gave him a little tap on the shoulder, enjoying this divine moment of revenge. They had waited so many years in silence, in Limbo or under the ground, waiting to reappear at the right moment. They had come to tell Fred that, by attacking innocent people, Gianni Manzoni had shattered the natural order of the universe, and the time had come to set that right.
Quintiliani, who had never been strong on retaliation, didn’t have the heart to attack Fred: What you’re going through is nothing compared to what you’ve inflicted so many times on strangers who didn’t fall in with your tyrannical ways. So how do you feel now, deep down, Don Manzoni?
“Say something, Fred. Just one word.”
“Vendetta.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going in there, Quint. You and me.”
“? . . .”
“We’ll get them, you and me. There can’t be more than ten of them.”
“Are you mad, Manzoni?”
“Don’t count on any reinforcements. If we don’t get them, they’re going to get us. And until then they’re going to do a bit of damage.”
“. . .”
“Don’t think about it, it’s an opportunity you’ll never get again. No trial, no years of gathering evidence to lock them up with, no lawyers to discredit your evidence. This is your one chance to finally wipe out the flower of organized crime. You’ll enjoy it, and you’ll be promoted for it. It will be a case of force majeure, and everyone will be happy.”
“There are a lot of them, Fred, and they’re well equipped.”
“You’ve spent twenty years studying these guys’ methods, and I’ve spent twenty years training and leading them, who’s better qualified than us two?”
Quintiliani pretended to think it over, and made a show of indignation, but he had taken the decision from the moment he had requested the reinforcements: it had been made quite clear to him that the special forces would not intervene as long as the hostages were dangling in the air with guns trained on them. They had even actually made the suggestion that, as an FBI officer, he should operate at his own discretion.
The federal agent now had the opportunity to behave, with complete impunity, in just the same way as those Mafia scumbags – how could he turn down such an opportunity? He, Thomas Quintiliani, would grab this chance to act according to his own set of rules, to be judge and executioner, to pull the trigger without the slightest compunction, or ethical doubts. As a boy, he had, like all the teenagers who hung out on Mulberry, been tempted to join a gang. They were the heroes, not the guys in blue who patrolled the streets with their coshes. And although once he grew up he had finally chosen his side, he had never forgotten his fascination with the made men, the goodfellas. And now here was Fate offering him a chance to exorcise a demon that sometimes reappeared in his most shameful dreams.
Fred, for his part, was also fulfilling an old fantasy: to pull the trigger with a good conscience, on the right side of the law and with the blessing of Uncle Sam. With a bit of luck, he might get a medal. All good things come to those who wait.
*
Some of the townspeople had fled to neighbouring towns to get help, others had gathered in the centre to try and decide how to react to the siege, but most of the population had simply gone home, turned on TVs and radios and started ringing round. When it very soon became clear that there was nothing more to hope for from the authorities, despite all the procedures and high-level communications, the inhabitants of Cholong finally understood, no doubt for the first time in their lives, that they were on their own.
In a café in the La Chapelle district, thirty people tried to address the situation, and to find some way of reacting to the threat. Some wanted to analyse it, while others called for immediate action before the situation reached a point of no return.
In the meeting room, a hundred others listened to a translation of the Times piece being read out loud, and heard about the Blake/Manzoni past. All felt betrayed. A mafioso! They had welcomed criminals into their midst, opened their school to the spawn of the Devil. The French state must have been complicit, as well as the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, the Pentagon, the UN, and they had all picked on Cholong-sur-Avre! On top of it all, the fête had been ruined and their lives put in danger all because of that cursed family. As indignation reached boiling point, a group of men formed a militia to track down the bastard and hand him over as soon as possible to those hunting him down.
A few individuals chose to act alone, in the secret hope of getting the reward, which would be enough to keep them secure for a very long time.
The odd individual was observed, here and there, behaving strangely, but to no particular effect. Some saw this upheaval as a temporary crisis and rapidly discovered ways of profiting from the situation. Old grudges w
ere brought to light by the urgency and the danger; this could be the perfect moment to settle a personal score.
For the older inhabitants, grim memories of terrible impotence in the face of an occupying power were reawakened. The word “war” was mentioned.
A war indeed, and one no one could ever have predicted here, in this peaceful township, where, just the day before, people were enjoying the good life. A town of seven thousand inhabitants, identical in every way to the neighbouring town, touched by history, but never very hard, evolving slowly through the ages. No better and no worse than their neighbours, the people were simultaneously home-loving and restless. If you believed the statistics, they obeyed all the demographic and seasonal norms, the national averages. A sociologist, at the risk of dying of boredom, could have used Cholong as the basis for the archetypal provincial town. And it all would have continued like this until the end of time if the Cholongais hadn’t suddenly been dragged into a war that was not of their own making.
*
Having lived through what I am about to relate is no help.
But if I hadn’t lived through it, I couldn’t have made it up.
There are surely some things that can’t be invented and that one couldn’t describe without having been there. Without having felt it all in one’s guts. Quint has to keep quiet, that’s his job. The story he’s told the world, well, I’m the only one who knows what’s true and what’s made up. Apart from him, I’m the only witness.
I just couldn’t resist it. I had to sit down again in front of a blank sheet of paper and tell what really happened, even if nobody ever reads these words. Reader, before you decide that I’m completely mad, just let me tell you the story of how me and Quint tried to restore order to that little town.
First of all, try to imagine what it’s like to make a pact with your worst enemy to kill your own brother. Me, Giovanni Manzoni, team up with a man whose death I had dreamed about so often? When I think about it now, long after it all happened, I still feel sick. I’ll try and hold back all the swear words that come to mind when I have to mention that mother-fucking cop (of course it’s tempting, but one mustn’t become too repetitive). I’ll just call him by his name, Tom Quint, originally Tommaso Quintiliani. One day they’ll make me change all the names in this story, but until then . . .
If only he’d been a product of my imagination, a fictional character. I could have made him do or say anything I wanted. Then I could have paid him back for everything he’s made me suffer in the last few years. But Tom is all too real. You can’t predict what he’s going to do, and I have no idea what makes him tick. Tom is a true dispenser of justice. Can you imagine that? He’s not just the good cop who’s a part of the neighbourhood, the ordinary human being, a bit fallible, you know the type (I certainly do, I’ve killed several of them). He comes from another species altogether. It may sound crazy, but avengers still exist. Tom is the worst type of cop, because he’s the best. It took him four years to finally get me, not a day less, but he got there in the end. Those Bureau guys, they don’t live like other people. You know, a bit of fun, a few dollars in your pocket. Take your kids to the cinema, take care of your bored wife, that kind of thing. No, for them, as soon as they wake up in the morning, all they can think of is the guy they’re chasing. They talk about him a hundred times a day. Putting him in a cell would be, like, the crowning achievement of their lives. As though there weren’t other, worthier aims in life. You start wondering if they’re really human, with those dark glasses so you can’t see where they’re looking. And how about those earpieces? I always wondered what they could hear in those things. Some kind of higher being that the rest of us mere mortals can’t hear?
No, no one knows how a guy like Quint functions. But he claims to know how a Manzoni functions. Compared to Tom Quint, you can see right through me. He caught me by anticipating all my movements, it was as though he could read my mind. If you believe the Feds, they think people like me are thick, limited, predictable – and plenty more sneering words like that.
I’d rather he kept his dark glasses on when he talks to me. On the rare moments when he takes them off, I can’t bear seeing myself in his eyes. I see things . . . How can I put it? . . . On good days I’m a psychopath, but most of the time I’m just an animal. He stares at me as one might stare at an animal. A dinosaur, some kind of extinct species, some creature that you only see in a delirious nightmare. And instead of not caring, it puts me in a rage. I don’t know where that rage comes from, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. So I keep it bottled up inside me, and it scares me. Truth scares me, it’s the only thing that does.
You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I was writing! There must be a word for it – something between scorn and mockery. “You, Fred? . . .” I’d have preferred it if he’d spat in my face. Me, write? Giovanni Manzoni? How could that be? The story of my life? It was a wretched idea, they all thought so, even my family. Why did they all get so worked up about it? I wasn’t asking anything from anybody. I wasn’t doing any harm. I just disappeared onto the veranda every day. They didn’t have to worry any more about any other stupid thing I might be getting up to. You should have seen them, instead of just fucking off and leaving me alone, the children laughed at me, and Livia – the whole thing made her nervous – she shouted at me worse than ever. Quint ratted on me to his bosses. Everyone got their wind up, all because of me. But I carried on, despite all the bad will. You know when I finally realized what a horrific thing it was for me to write my memoirs? It was when they destroyed them with a bazooka.
Sure, I was traumatized then. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed a catastrophe like that could really happen. And even seeing it, the whole scene right in front of my eyes, hearing everything, I still refused to believe it. You see it, but the brain can’t take it in. The story of my life going up in smoke. When something like that happens, you start imagining things, you look for signs, you try to make some sense of the whole thing. You have to really, otherwise you’d go mad. I decided that, by writing my life story, I had unleashed supernatural powers. I had annoyed the gods, like in the Roman and Greek times. Perhaps it was written: my story should never be told, my memoirs must remain just hovering above my head. It was a way of telling me: Giovanni, who’s interested in this so-called truth? Who gives a fuck about your life? Your story, it’s about the customs of a time gone by, it’s of no interest to people now. You belong to a species that’s heading for extinction, the race will die out with you. In any case, who would be stupid enough to believe in a single one of those days you spent in New Jersey? Even Livia has no idea of what went on. Quint could testify, and how. No one else would have believed me. It all had to be suppressed, probably just as well in the end.
Maybe one day, when everything’s settled down, they might let me publish this, with the word “novel” on the cover, and I’ll have pulled it off. I’ll change everything, the places, the names, the timescale, everything except the actual truth. No one will notice anything, no one will suspect anything, it won’t set off any disastrous reaction. The reader will just say to himself “It’s fiction,” and as soon as the book’s closed, he’ll have forgotten about it. I myself don’t even want to be believed any more. I just want to tell the story, page after page, one thing after another, and then the next thing, on and on to the end. A novel, for Christ’s sake. With heroes and villains, comedy and tragedy – you just have to call it fiction. No need to try and be serious, or to believe that what one’s doing is important. No need to be clever, just tell the story, say what comes next. I’ve learned from experience to wait for what comes next. So many things happened from one year to the next, sometimes from one hour to the next. And while you’re waiting for “The End,” all sorts of things could happen, good and bad, things that seemed good, but got complicated, fuck-ups that proved to be helpful. You just had to wait and see.
Me and Quint, w
e decided to get them, these Newark executioners. They were crazy to have left Newark, that wise-guy paradise, that perfect world where anything goes. Those long grey streets, those rows of low-rise buildings, with odd gaps everywhere like missing teeth. You had to get up early to see anything attractive about it, even if you had been born there. And yet it was more real than anywhere else – friends were friends for life, the pasta tasted better, the women were more passionate, even the blood seemed redder. And you understood the hidden meanings in people’s words. If you haven’t known Newark, you’re like a wild animal who has been born in the zoo.
God made temptation, the Devil made hell, and Man made Newark. And when you’re cast out of Newark, the rest of the world is like a deep dark hole.
Yes, they were crazy to have set off from there to come and sort me out. I should say, eliminate me. In the real sense of the word. Don Mimino, their patron saint, who was rotting in jail at Rikers, had instructed them to dissect me and make a useful travelling vanity case out of my skin. But since the old guy’s travelling days were over, he changed his mind in the end; he’d started reading books, and old ones too, so he thought new bindings might be a better idea. (Apparently Don Mimino had decided to take advantage of his stretch in jail to tackle the whole of Shakespeare – he would read it all, understand it all, and then begin again, until he finally got to the bottom of it and sucked out every drop of meaning – after all, he had all the time in the world to do it in.) What could be more thrilling than to read Hamlet, holding between your fingers the cured and tanned skin of the man who caused your downfall? The Don hadn’t stinted on the expenses, and the families from the Five Boroughs had sent their best men, each one hand-picked for his speciality. I was, of course, flattered by this gathering of talent on my behalf.
Malavita Page 22
