My Mother-in-Law Drinks

by Diego De Silva

  The only thing I do understand—as I catch Matrix’s eye and see that he’s now staring at Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo and smiling at him with the desperate satisfaction of someone who’s finally managed to land a blow—is that he did it on purpose.

  When you see a prisoner abandon himself to such an instinctive need, you finally really understand what it means not to be able to use your hands, to be in the hands of someone else. It’s almost as if you take part personally in his regression. And it’s hard to take.

  By pissing himself, Matrix has upped the ante. He has, so to speak, reversed the responsibility for his capture. As if he had turned to the television cameras and said: “Look at me now. Look at what he’s done to me.”

  And Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo, practically from one second to the next, finds himself cast as a torturer and turnkey, something very different from the image he had until just a minute before (at least, it hadn’t come through so clearly).

  Which, necessarily, changes everything.

  THE TELEVISION OF SENTIMENTALISM

  HAS NEVER EXISTED

  You should see him, Matrix, now that his self-induced incontinence is beginning to become visually recognizable on television—the buzz of the hyenas, in fact, has begun to take on the unmistakable tonality of disapproval (a couple of them are already bickering with each other); Scully and Mulder exchange a glance for the third time; the female journalist from RAI (who strikes me as a fine specimen of a jackal, truth be told) has leapt straight up into the air; Mary Stracqua hasn’t noticed a thing; her (ex) cameraman has already zoomed in repeatedly on the trousers—you ought to see, as I was saying, what a face of pure innocence he’s put on. What a Christlike position he’s assumed (on his knees, his head bent over one shoulder, his sad eyes staring, his mouth half-open). How he’s playing the part (badly, but that hardly matters) of the prisoner deprived of his rights. A truly despicable spectacle, a horrifying blend of pity and disgust.

  By now we all ought to be able to agree that in order for reality shows to work, they must arouse aesthetic revulsion. Since reality shows are documentaries about human misery made for nonscientific purposes, we watch them to feel superior. And so it’s obvious that in such a format a corporeal excretion becomes pure kryptonite.

  People have no problem swallowing polemics motivated by relative indignation concerning, for instance, television’s humiliation of the body, provided they remain strictly within a cast-iron aesthetic schema (the veline, or pneumatic young TV showgirls, showing off their tits and asses, oh what an objectification of the female body); but like hell are they going to put up with the compassion stirred by the sight of some poor man soaking in a puddle of his own urine. The reality show does not admit classical pietas. At the very most, programmed emotions.

  Let’s take, for example, shows designed to resemble shipwrecks: concentration camps surveilled by tyrannical video cameras that save the lives of those who remain but execute the prisoners they liberate. In the concentration camp of the reality show, being freed is like being sent to hell. Whoever is rescued from the island is a dead man.

  The apprenticeship of privation created to teach the true values of life does not leave room for personal initiatives or reckless impulses. It’s a sort of coercive emotional treatment tested out on the contestants (sort of like the one to which Malcolm McDowell is subjected in A Clockwork Orange to eradicate violent impulses from his psyche), who are asked in the final episode the regulation question: “Do you feel like a different person now?” And with tears in their eyes they all say yes.

  Imprisonment, exile, loneliness, sadness, distance, the challenges of socialization and adaptation, even hunger and thirst—when placed within that sort of logic all these are nothing but slightly more demanding parlor games in which the contestant never really runs the risk of doing himself or herself any real lasting harm. The safety nets are always carefully strung up. In fact if you feel ill there’s a medical service ready to examine and treat you. Death on a live broadcast is not (yet) a part of our scheduled programming. Because clearly the last thing the corporation wants is lawsuits for wrongful death on its docket. It’s enough to see the contestant make a little bit of a fool of him- or herself (which is after all a way of winning).

  This is why Matrix’s coup de théâtre has so irremediably undercut the would-be reality show of his hostage taking. Because it has suddenly made it very serious indeed. It has engendered a real danger of fellow feeling, which is something that you want to avoid above all else in this kind of program.

  Years ago I saw part of a porno variety show that was called, I think, Provini in diretta.

  This is how it worked: a well-established porn actress agreed to mate without preamble with various aspiring cine-stallions (or rather, ordinary chronically horny male civilians, decidedly unattractive and driven by the desperate ambition to achieve their goal of screwing not so much the woman of their dreams as the woman of their wet dreams) for a preset number of minutes.

  The conditions for taking part in the audition: prior authorization to broadcast whatever was filmed, no matter the outcome in terms of performance.

  Translation: you want to screw the porn star? Be our guest, she’s all yours, you don’t even have to pay a cent. But if you can’t do it, you’ll spend the rest of your life in the public archive of epic embarrassments (which as a poison pill, let’s admit it, has more the flavor of a deal with the devil than a mere abusive clause, and moreover without the certainty of benefit that any self-respecting devil is required to provide, in keeping with the minimum demonic contractual standards currently observed).

  Now you’re probably thinking: “Sure, but at the very worst the only people who are going to know about it are consumers of pornography, whether occasional or habitual: it’s not as if I’m making a fool of myself on, say, a prime-time show like Domenica In.” Sure but fucking nothing. It’s a monumental failure and humiliation, and there’s no fixing it. It’s a blot on your sexual criminal record that you have absolutely no chance of getting expunged. You can already imagine it, the private showings people would hold just to roll on the floor laughing behind your back.

  After three or four auditions, I swear, I had to turn it off. I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it anymore. They should have called the show If This Is a Man, seriously. A full-fledged celebration of performance anxiety and impotence. There wasn’t a single one of those desperately horny losers who came anywhere close to producing even the most timid attempt, and I don’t even mean an effort sufficient to cross the threshold, but even just to ring the doorbell.

  And it was genuinely heartbreaking to have to watch the puppet show of commiseration that followed, the whining and the justifications, the requests, all rigorously turned down, for a second chance, the contractual courtesy of the porno diva in stiletto heels and fishnet stockings as she consoled the miserable wretch before dismissing him and moving on to the next failure.

  As you can guess, the horror show in question dates back to the pre-Viagra years. Considering however not even so much the anxiety as the complete failure in terms of performance on the part of the auditioners, in all likelihood the magic pill of our present age would have had no more effect than a Tic Tac.

  The purpose of the program (perhaps not directly pursued by the producers and directors themselves, but still very elegantly attained) thus wound up being to confirm the annihilating power of the video camera. Because it’s obvious (though not to the participants of Provini in diretta, evidently) that to give a sexual performance under the gaggle of lights on a film set (and moreover with a cameraman right there directing traffic and giving you orders like, I don’t know, “Now lift your leg” or “Pull out and then go back in”) must be quite a challenge if you’re not a professional, or at least a filthy and completely uninhibited pig.

  Thinking back on it all these years later, Provini in diretta was to a normal reality show what
an Ultimate Fighting Champi­onship round is to a normal boxing match. Low blows, in particular, were absolutely allowed. And it was the program itself that administered them.

  After all, it too was a reality show (what could be more real than a sexual failure caught on tape?); but the fact that, by exposing the contestant to that emotional massacre, it left the door open to human compassion made it completely unthinkable for a mass audience.

  To defend against the risk of sentimentality (which, by creating fellow feeling with the contestant, tend to distance the viewer from the format), the reality show has therefore elevated the art of making an ass of oneself to a core, protected value. It’s confined it within certain preset boundaries. It takes extreme care not to arouse compassion. In its universe, there is no such thing.

  Exactly the dirty trick that Matrix had just managed to play on the reality show of his imprisonment.

  “Hey,” I say in a low voice to Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo, in the tone of a friend offering advice, “let it go.”

  “Let what go?” he replies, also in a voice just above a whisper.

  I glance down at Matrix’s puddle, just to make it clear what I’m talking about.

  “It’s not worth it.”

  “What’s not worth it?” he asks, pretending not to understand.

  I tilt my head toward my shoulder and compress my lips as if to say: “Come on.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” he says.

  But he’s not really convinced, and it shows.

  I’m about to reply when, out of the blue, the formerly-hot female journalist from RAI breaks in from the front entrance, thundering from the television monitors in a piqued tone of voice, like a young schoolteacher disciplining a pair of naughty schoolchildren.

  “Can we hear what you’re saying too?!?”

  Just like that, peremptory, as if we’d just made a rank beginner’s mistake.

  We all fall silent and turn in her direction, incredulous. In the dramatic pause that ensues she realizes that she’s put her foot wrong and starts swiveling her head back and forth, looking first at Scully and now at Mulder as if the two of them were playing Ping-Pong.

  I promptly retract whatever blame I was leveling at Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo for having treated her preemptively to a large helping of whoop-ass (he must have already known what an asshole she was); then we exchange a glance as if to say: “You first or me first?”

  Me first.

  “Listen, you,” I practically shout at her, “if you want to make yourself useful, why don’t you just leave?”

  The journalist lowers her sails then and there.

  Mary Stracqua’s ex-cameraman, now a freelancer, instinctively takes a close-up of her face (at that moment I wonder where her cameraman is).

  “I only wanted to know what was going on,” she explains, her face red as a beet.

  “In that case, just watch, and don’t bust our balls,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo says, beating me to the punch.

  The journalist heaves a sigh and the hyenas let loose. It’s all a big collective “Waahh,” raucous laughter, and even a few entirely inappropriate offers of sexual services aimed at the poor woman (one, in particular, so horrifies her that she remains wide-eyed as if she’d just visualized the position proposed).

  “What I want to know is where’s your cameraman?” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo asks like a punctilious director.

  Exactly what I was wondering myself a minute ago.

  “Ac . . . tually,” she stammers, “he just went out for a minute to shoot some footage of the exterior and . . .”

  “. . . And you don’t even know where your cameraman is. Okay, that’s all we need to know.”

  “All right, Engineer,” the formerly hot female journalist counterattacks in an upsurge of wounded dignity, digging in for the fight, “you got me. Now do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “I’m not here to give interviews.”

  “Well, you’re the one who wanted television coverage, if I’m not mistaken,” she retorts, annoyed. “So let us do our job.”

  It seems she shouldn’t have said that, because Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo turns ugly again.

  “Your job? What kind of job did you do for my son? Did your news program by any chance do a piece on him, a feature, an in-depth investigation? Did you talk to me so that I could have my say on the subject? You should have turned this into a cause célèbre, the massacre of two innocent young men: but you aimed low, presented it as a minor news item, one of those tidbits that leave your viewers horrified as they eat their lunch, just long enough to switch over to something completely different, as you like to say in your bland, anodyne language.”

  Now he’s pushing ahead like an express train, and there’s no stopping him.

  “Well, I have some news for you: I’m here to do your job. The job you don’t seem able to do. The job you don’t do. In fact, I’ve already done it, and now I’m moving on to the next phase. You can stay if you want to, you can film everything that happens and broadcast it live, and that’s far more than you deserve. Or you can leave; it makes no difference to me. I don’t intend to answer any questions.”

  The journalist tries to say something, but Mary Stracqua unexpectedly intervenes in her defense, entirely unasked and out of place.

  “Why don’t you leave her alone?!” she exclaims, in an irrepressible outburst of feminine solidarity.

  “Oh no, you’re not telling me she’s still here, are you?” says Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo, speaking to me instead of her.

  And everyone laughs.

  In the presence of yet another conversion of tragedy into farce, once again I’m tempted to leave, and I just barely manage to resist the impulse.

  “All right,” I say to Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo, “I’ll stay.”

  He stares at me as if to say: “When did I ask if you would, excuse me?”

  I ignore this (especially because he’s right), and then I deal a new hand.

  “What do you say we restore a minimum of decorum, Engineer? It doesn’t seem to me there’s anything to laugh at here.”

  “You’re perfectly right, Counselor. Let’s get this over with, I’m in full agreement.”

  And he aims his gun at Matrix.

  Who clenches his jaw in an expression of defiance.

  I don’t know whether he reacts this way because he’s not afraid of dying or because his criminal instincts tell him that Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo hasn’t decided to shoot him yet.

  I don’t have criminal instincts (at least I don’t think I do), but I’m inclined to think it’s the latter, right here and now.

  Evidently Mulder thinks otherwise, since he addresses Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo from the monitor, even putting both hands in the air, as if the gun were pointed at him.

  “Engineer, wait!”

  “What do you want, Captain?” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo asks without lowering his pistol.

  “Don’t do it,” he whispers, almost as if he were asking it as a personal favor.

  And in fact Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo hesitates for a moment.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because there’s no need. Don’t you see that you’ve already done what you set out to do?”

  “You think so? Do you know what day it is today?”

  Mulder is stumped.

  So I answer for him:

  “Wednesday.”

  “That’s right, Counselor. And do you know what happens, let’s say, every other Wednesday, as regular as clockwork for about a year now?”

  A rhetorically inquisitorial question, considering that he’s glaring contemptuously at Matrix as he asks it.

  “This disgusting bastard comes here, to this supermarket, to buy his favorite yogurt,” he says, answering his own question.

 
Mulder says nothing.

  Whereupon Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo goes on to detail the charges with an indignation, it should be said, that is rather touching.

  “How could you let such a dangerous criminal move around freely in this neighborhood? How could such a thing be allowed to happen?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Engineer. Believe me,” Mulder replies, genuinely overcome. “These things do happen, and there’s nothing we can do about them. It sometimes happens that fugitives from justice go on leading ordinary lives, and it might take us years to find them. It’s not our fault. We do what we can.”

  “I have to agree with Mul . . . He’s right,” I break in. “You can’t put the blame on . . .”

  “Stay out of this, Counselor,” the engineer brusquely interrupts me. “You’re here to defend that man over there, not the police.”

  I’m so taken aback that this time I don’t even blush.

  “I’m not your henchman,” I reply in a chilly tone. “Address me with due respect.”

  He takes my point and arches his eyebrows in a way that to some extent placates me.

  “You’re right, forgive me,” he excuses himself, shaking his head. “My nerves are shot.”

  “Engineer,” Mulder resumes, “please. You’ve already taken a hostage; don’t add murder to the list. Leave him to us. Let us arrest him.”

  “So that he can wallow in jail waiting for another trial to start? And who knows when and how that trial will end. Thanks a lot, Captain, but I’ve already gone through that routine, and you just look where it’s brought me.”

  Mulder lets out a sigh that sounds very much like surrender.

  A disconcerting silence falls, during which we all feel guilty.

  Deep inside, however, I have another feeling. Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo’s understandable contempt for our society’s institutions really grated on me. In part because he’s been hammering home the concept for the past hour.

  There was a young cousin of mine (the son of an especially idiot uncle) who had the same bad habit: whenever he found a reasonable argument to justify some whim of his, he’d hammer away at it until you wanted to throw him down a staircase.