The neighborhood was in the process of transformation, this was the first thing he would have written in his report. What had at one time been a neighborhood on the outskirts, in every sense, was on the verge of becoming fashionable. There were fewer and fewer old men playing cards, cursing some saint because luck wasn’t on their side. Fewer and fewer old ladies sitting outside doorways on straw chairs, while hens pecked in the dirt nearby. And more and more young people like Riccardo.
Even if all of them hadn’t lost their hair (although a percentage that Riccardo estimated at between twenty-five and thirty-five resembled him in a striking manner), they could be defined in every respect as young people who were heading toward a rosy future. Young people with ideas, a little like Riccardo, who maybe struggled to express them completely, perhaps because (a little like Riccardo) they worked in cold and coercive structures (even if the furnishings of those structures conveyed the contrary). And yet these young people wanted to react to all this, to create an image of themselves that would nurture optimism. Therefore, the young people seemed truly young, and those who were forty or older did their utmost to seem like young people.
The neighborhood was in the process of transformation, so Riccardo would have written. The houses, built of mortar and stucco, without solid foundations, and once inhabited by poor people who got by as best they could, were gaining value in the real-estate market. Those poor people, since they had reached the age limit (approximately seventy) beyond which it is no longer possible to pretend that everything is all right, were selling (en masse) the houses they owned. With the money obtained they had (almost en masse) decided to move out of that neighborhood (or die in exotic places). The young people who bought (using in part the family inheritance) spent more than the value of the apartments (thus contributing to the distortion of the market) and proceeded to renovate them. Wealth was arriving and the pace of life was changing; the young seemed younger, hence with more future before them.
The neighborhood was in the process of transformation, so Riccardo would have liked to begin and end his report. It was, in fact, the last thought that his mind formed before he came out of the bar in a pitiful state, with his blood pressure falling rapidly and his legs trembling in a truly suspicious manner.
Francesco
The only thing Francesco, now nearly eighteen years old and a longtime resident of the Pigneto neighborhood, had understood in his life was: My father is a moron. This discovery had become a source of pride and power. His father was a moron because he didn’t understand anything, he wasn’t aware of anything, he didn’t look at anything: a moron, that was all.
Awhile back, Francesco had stolen a motorbike (Honda SH). Not that he needed it; he just wanted to go to the stadium. Since his motorcycle was broken, and since there are always people (Francesco said) who leave their bikes unlocked, hoping, therefore (not just unconsciously), that they will be stolen, Francesco, after seeing all the fans setting off for the stadium with their folded banners, was not overcome by fear (which a first theft generally involves) and, instead, inserted a screwdriver in the starter of the Honda SH, turned on the engine, and headed for the stadium on the stolen bike.
The motorcycle had to do with his father’s moronicness. It was really a perfect example.
His father was a moron, Francesco thought, on the way to the stadium, mounted on the stolen bike. Especially as Francesco considered him responsible for everything, even his own passion for the Rome team that he had transmitted at a tender age but then hadn’t known how to cultivate. Something that morons do in general—they open a pathway and are unable to follow it. Precisely because they are morons.
His father had in recent years suffered a financial collapse. It wasn’t that he had attempted to scale a significant height and, just before the peak, had fallen. In that case one might have appreciated his courage. No, he, the father, had had a financial collapse because he had fallen in love with someone else and had left the family: Francesco, his mother, and his sister. Not to say that the father had ever made a lot of money. Occasionally he wrote for television. They had come to live in Pigneto when it was not yet fashionable and prices were low. Francesco’s mother had repeated every other day that it was time to buy a house in this neighborhood, where houses were cheap. But he, the father, like the idiot he was, kept putting off the purchase: These houses are going to fall in on themselves soon, they’ll implode, they’re old, decaying. Let’s wait, when we have more money we’ll move to another neighborhood. Typical moron’s rationale. They continued to rent. Then he, the father, had the clever idea of falling in love with someone else. Another moron, worse than him. Of course, morons seek each other out, so to speak, they pair up. So the mother thought she’d better kick him out on his ass, and now he has to work double to pay two rents, for the house in Pigneto and for his own, practically a hovel, on the Prenestina. And this he does, the moron, a little to his woman and a little to the family. A little money here, a little there. Both women kick him in the ass, and he goes along like that, like the moron he is.
Now, Francesco thought, the day he went to the stadium on the motorbike, is it possible that a person never learns from his mistakes? Because his father was like that, someone who never learns. Even when Francesco was caught with the stolen motorbike and all hell broke loose, and he was taken to the police station in handcuffs, even then, when his father came to get him, the first thing he did was hug him, tight. In front of the cops, who looked on in embarrassment. They all expected his father to slug him, kick him in the ass or whatever, whereas he, on the contrary, in front of the cops, had hugged his son. Then, as if that were not enough, he said to the police captain: When your son steals something, it’s the time to give him a present. Like a moron, no? A father who quotes an old Zen saying, a saying that among other things he was using in a TV script. He says it in front of everyone. To explain that a son who steals is only asking for attention and affection, that’s why it’s a good time to give him a present. The captain had run his hands through his hair and said under his breath, How will we go on like this …
The Father … and His Lover
One morning, early, Mario Cirillo, motorman on the Metro, found a person locked in a car. There’s another one, he thought. He didn’t expect that there would be any further surprises. It can happen that a passenger doesn’t get out at the last stop. And then gets stuck. The train, at the end of its run, is taken to the local yards. The doors are closed, the electricity is turned off, and the train is abandoned. And then generally the locked-in passenger begins to yell like a madman and the motorman, hearing these shouts, thinks: There’s another one. Every year, at least one passenger, for one reason or another, forgets to get out at the last stop and finds himself alone, on the point of tears, on the edge of a panic attack, stuck in the car.
That morning, it happened that Mario Cirillo had found not one but two people locked in the train. A sign, said the motorman, that those two not only hadn’t realized that they were at the last stop; they hadn’t even noticed that the train was heading for the yards. They hadn’t realized anything, they hadn’t shouted, or begged, or stamped their feet. Nothing. Or maybe they had, but it was too late, the train had already been sitting for a while.
Francesco’s father, Carlo Chirico, was one of the two locked in the car. There’s another one, thought the motorman, not suspecting that there was a second person with him. A woman, Marta della Rosa. Two morons, the motorman had remarked to his friends while they were having coffee. Today I found not one but two morons.
At the beginning of that adventure, Carlo was in the next-to-last car, Marta in the last. Both were reading books: Carlo Asylum, and Marta Ocean Sea. In the grip of literature they hadn’t been aware of anything. Then, trying to get out, they had come face to face. Both were frightened, and screamed as if they’d seen a ghost.
What morons, Carlo said to Marta later, how could they not have noticed anything? For Carlo it was his first experience, so to speak, of b
eing possessed by reading. In Marta’s case, on the other hand, it often happened that she didn’t get off at her stop. Now they were both locked in the metro. They couldn’t even inform the emergency services, there was no way. They spent the night together somewhat fearfully, they talked to each other about many things, and when, early in the morning, the motorman got them out, they began to laugh. The sort of laughter that covers embarrassment: at having been a bit foolish but, at the same time, at having said some important things. At having bared themselves, so to speak, in front of one another. An inversion: They had been underground together, and had been so comfortable that when the morning light illuminated them they were pained, as if they had been hurled out of the earthly paradise, which this time, however, was down below.
What a moron, Liliana, Carlo’s wife, said to him, when she saw him again. I’m here in this place working all night and you’re in a train reading Asylum. Practically the same thing that Liliana said again when, a few months later, she discovered that her husband not only was fucking Marta but was in love with her. Really, his wife said to him. In love? What a moron … I’m here in this …
Francesco and Cinzia
The boy had noticed awhile ago that there was something odd. If there was any value in what he did—that is, almost nothing, from morning to night—it was that he could look around. And looking around, Francesco had noticed the storefront. He had his girlfriend look, too, saying to her, There’s something odd. To this observation his girl, Cinzia, had replied: Right. A word that she repeated often, especially when Francesco commented on something he saw: Right.
Cinzia adored Francesco. She saw in him everything she didn’t see in her other contemporaries and schoolmates. Francesco was someone who got respect. He used his fists. That was how he resolved things, with his fists. And he was successful. He wasn’t like her classmates, all very polite and very fake, according to Cinzia. Francesco and Cinzia went to the French school, a private school. They were in the same class. What am I supposed to do? My father is a moron, he enrolled me in this school, so in his view I’m learning important things and hanging out with fancy people. But what can I learn from some filthy rich morons?
Right, Cinzia answered. She found herself in the same situation. Her father and mother had a lot of money and could afford to have all sorts of luxuries. And they had them. And in having them, according to Cinzia, they contributed to the devastation of the world. Cinzia detested people who were devastating the world. They got on her nerves. She bought clothes from street vendors without worrying about the label or the quality. She didn’t even worry when her mother borrowed her clothes. Cinzia’s mother, in fact, considered her daughter a born style-maker. Someone who wherever she shopped would buy the right thing. In fact, Cinzia created trends. So her mother said. Right, Cinzia commented, my mother doesn’t understand shit about anything. You should see my father, Francesco added. As a matter of fact, the two had become acquainted talking about their fathers and mothers. Then they had gotten together when, during a discussion about pacifism, the girl had seemed to go crazy because her interlocutor, according to her, not only underestimated the problem of imperialism but also made some out-of-place remarks, partly to undercut Cinzia, the style-maker, and partly to tease her. The discussion ended when Francesco got involved and started punching the boy. Every time he hit him he said: What’s the matter? You’re not laughing anymore.
Right, said Cinzia, some time later, when they kissed for the first time. From then on no one wanted to have a discussion with Cinzia the pacifist or her warrior companion, Francesco. And the two formed a close, intimate couple. But isolated.
Now, this storefront which had something odd about it was actually a warehouse: Twice a week a van arrived and unloaded refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines. And on an almost daily basis, these household appliances, one by one, left the place. The operations occurred in a regular, straightforward fashion. Matteo Cosentino, the owner, waited in the doorway of the store for the arrival of the van and helped unload it. His wife, Daniela Lo Prete, came out and handed over the receipt. The business was repeated in the opposite direction immediately afterward, in the sense that Matteo loaded into his minivan, a Fiat Ducato, a television, a refrigerator, but also a chair, a lamp. His wife gave him a packing list, and then every other time, according to her mood, she said goodbye to her husband, who, every other time, according to his mood, departed saying goodbye to his wife with a wave of his left hand.
These were all simple operations that went on without any interference. The neighborhood was in the process of changing, it’s true; for much of the day someone with a truck was loading or unloading goods, but there were no traffic jams or parked cars that got in the way of movement. Matteo loaded up and left.
There was something odd, however.
Matteo and Daniela (and Little Giulia)
Once a week, Matteo and his wife, Daniela, lowered the metal shutter halfway. This happened when the gold tokens arrived. Matteo and Daniela had the job of counting them and delivering them to the winner. There was no danger as long as the whole operation unfolded in low profile, so to speak. It shouldn’t attract attention. To keep the operation’s profile low, the gold tokens, placed in a canvas sack decorated with a red ribbon, were put in a gym bag and loaded into the back or, sometimes, left on the rear seat. What in the world could there be of importance in a gym bag? Not to mention the fact that the gold tokens were not a very desirable haul; even people who received them as a prize had to exchange the gold for money. In this exchange the tokens lost twenty percent of their value—imagine if you’d stolen them.
For two years Matteo and Daniela had managed the franchise for third-party delivery of prizes won on television.
It was a modern business, certain to expand. Television will give away more and more prizes (of all varieties), and there will have to be agencies to handle the delivery, at least one in every major city, to reduce the costs of transportation. Anyway, if you won a television, it did not reach the winner directly, by courier. From the factory it went to the agency and the agency took care of delivering it to the home.
Matteo and Daniela, who had been married for three years, had decided to take this job. They had also decided something else: to have a child. The truth is, Daniela had made (and imposed) the decision. Matteo temporized. Now that the business was about to get going, a child could slow its progress. You had to take care of a child, Matteo always said; we can’t leave it to grandparents or babysitters. Let’s wait. We’re just getting going and then we bring a child into the world. If we wait for the right moment, Daniela answered, it will never arrive. There are no right moments. Since Daniela believed in what she said, one fine day she simply informed her husband that the right moment had arrived: in the sense that she was pregnant. Nine months later Giulia was born. Adorable, happy, healthy, good-natured. If only she had slept at night, it would have been perfect—the right moment, so to speak. But she was a child who liked to be up, maybe she was already immersed in the sweet nightlife of the Pigneto neighborhood. Matteo rocked her whenever he could. In brief, the matter stood like this: Matteo no longer slept. And the work suffered from it. I told you so, he said to Daniela. She put up with it; she had to devote herself to the child, she couldn’t worry about her husband’s sleep. It will pass, calm down, that way you’ll calm Giulia as well.
So Matteo also had to take on the guilt of the child’s insomnia. It was a vicious circle: He was sleepy, in the morning he was irritable, and because he had to do all that unloading, his irritability was passed on to the child, who wouldn’t go to sleep at night, etc., etc. The fact is that Matteo simply kept repeating to Daniela: I told you so. He got more irritable, because Daniela didn’t listen to him or even offer a nod of comprehension. Indeed, some time ago Daniela had even stopped saying: It will pass, calm down. She limited herself to accusing her husband directly of being a weakling. Of giving way for so little: Is there time to sleep or not? All this tension had dug
into Matteo’s face and his constitution. One day, after a sleepless night, he left a refrigerator on the sidewalk. He forgot to load it into his van and just drove off. Luckily, Mario, the bartender, immediately informed him on his cell phone. When Matteo returned, Mario offered him a coffee. He needed it. And as long as he was there, Matteo vented a little: himself, Daniela, the child, the job. He also said: I’m glad it was a refrigerator, imagine if I’d left the gold tokens on the sidewalk. Francesco, since he did nothing from morning to night, heard (and understood) everything, and a thought flashed in his mind: That’s what’s odd about that place. Right, Cinzia had responded when Francesco told her about it. When, however, he confided to her what he wanted to do, that is steal, without spilling any blood, a bag of gold tokens and move to a tropical island, far from that moron his father and all the rest of the disgusting world—when Francesco confided all this to Cinzia, she didn’t say, Right. She said nothing.
Peppe
For three weeks Peppe had said nothing to anyone. He withdrew into himself. Things were not going well, a brain tumor had been diagnosed. How long did he have left to live—a month, three months? Peppe was spending all his savings, spending it on crazy things. A month, three months of life. Peppe no longer had a family. His wife was dead. His son didn’t want anything to do with him. He had gone away. He had even sold his house in Pigneto, bought by his father with many sacrifices. Once he had the money in his pocket, he had flown to England. To be a baker, an honest job with a good income. Unlike his: Peppe, for his whole life, had been a pusher, drugs and other such substances. He had even smuggled Viagra. Now that he was about to die, a single thought tormented him: not to be able to hand over his knowledge to someone. All that criminal experience would be lost like tears in the rain. If only he had had a different son, more inclined to humbly learn the job, rather than be a baker. In England, worse. Knock himself out from morning till night. Why? A life of sacrifices for what? The two-family house, the family, the lousy pay? Was this the life his son wanted? Come on. His work required skill. Now the contacts, the friendships, the relations he had built, had managed, and had been able to exploit would no longer have meaning. That thought tormented him more than the brain tumor.
Rome Noir Page 18
