Savage Kiss

by Roberto Saviano

  One day, after the usual banging against the metal roller gate, another knocking announced his food, but instead of a meal he found two ten-euro notes. His mother hadn’t been well, she hadn’t been able to get out and do her grocery shopping, so this was how she was making up for it. He held them crumpled in his hand for an hour, then his stomach made up his mind for him.

  With his spare pennies he wandered the city like a vagabond. His eyes bloodshot from being indoors too long, the acrid stench of his filth, his weary trudge. People avoided him, taking him for yet another junkie in withdrawal, but he didn’t even see them. He felt muffled. He imagined himself trapped in a giant block of gelatin, outside of which orbited Dumbo, Scignacane, and Nicolas. He tried to grab them, but his movements were slow and awkward.

  A fast-food outlet, that’s what he needed. With twenty euros, he’d take care of lunch, dinner, and even lunch the next day. He walked along, shooting rapid glances right and left, and caught glimpses of Nicolas everywhere. When he did, he’d take shelter in a doorway or behind a car, then continue walking. All of a sudden, there it was, as if out of a mirage: Piazza Principe Umberto. His own piazza, the one that had been assigned to him by his paranza. An anthill where every tiny being had a specific role all its own. The lookouts standing at the street corners in their relaxed poses, with one hand ready to send a WhatsApp message in case the police showed up, the customers striding with a confident gait into the doorways, and the piazza bosses strolling along, taking in every movement at a glance. It was a perfect and highly coordinated dance. From a certain point of view, it was a pleasant sight because it comforted him: his cloistered existence hadn’t yet deadened his senses. He could hear the customers murmuring “ch’hé avé?” as a sort of password for ordering baggies of cocaine rather than pellets of hashish. After which a different kind of dance ensued. One hand met another hand, in the scissor space between middle finger and ring finger the narcotics were handed to the customer, who in turn transferred the cash between middle and index finger. Hands that take and hands that give.

  Dentino had been there for fifteen minutes, and he’d calculated at least a thousand euros of completed cash transactions. A thousand euros that should have gone straight into his pocket.

  The show must go on. He heard the words in Italian-accented English in his head; everything was going on without him. His stomach cramped and his throat was swamped with a mouthful of acid. He spat a yellowish clot onto the pavement and hurried off toward the fast-food outlet. The line stretched out the front door, a restless oversized snake that was mainly tourists. You could see lots of them in the city, lately: sunshine, sea, a subway system that’s a work of art, no terrorism.

  Dentino once again spat on the ground and took his place behind a woman with a broad-brimmed straw hat. As she turned to talk to her friend, she managed somehow to slap Dentino in the face with the brim of her hat, and he snapped back into full consciousness. He wasn’t about to wait in line in his own city.

  He strode the length of the line, walked into the restaurant, and stopped behind a young man who was just collecting his change. As soon as he saw him, the manager addressed him with a: “Guaglio’, t’aggio visto, sai?” Hey, kid, I saw you, you know? “Go straight back out that door and stand in line like everybody else.” Dentino didn’t even bother to reply but instead turned and identified a marble-topped table for two, and, with the fury that was filling his body, he didn’t feel even an ounce of effort in lifting it. He hurled the table at the manager in a gust of rage, and the manager barely dodged it by flinging himself to the floor. Dentino grabbed the paper-wrapped parcel of food out of the kid’s hands and headed back out onto the street, scattering the line of terrified tourists. At last, he finally felt alive again.

  He wound up eating in the garage, standing up. “So now what?” he wondered aloud. “So now what?” He couldn’t stand still, as if that mouthful of fresh air made it intolerable for him now to be confined in that funky animal’s den, that mousehole. He threw the paper into a corner and started wandering in a circle, endlessly, punching himself in the forehead and the chest. Then he dropped to the floor, exhausted. When he reawakened, he didn’t know whether it was day or night, but none of that mattered, the time had come to go see ’a Koala and Antonello. He opened the metal roller gate and saw it was still light out; with a brisk step he hurried to ’a Koala’s apartment house and went upstairs.

  ’A Koala was wearing an XXL T-shirt and a pair of Dentino’s Chicago Bulls basketball shorts that hung down to her calves. She looked like a little girl playing at being a grown-up. She ran straight to Dentino, hugged him, and kissed him on the mouth even though he recoiled as if she were the one who stank. But she persisted and touched him all over, checking to make sure he was all still there while she told him how worried she had been, even though there had been no sign of the police at all. Dentino let her vent, his arms hanging down at his sides, as if doing penance. “Why didn’t you ever come?” she asked, but he had no answer, not even for himself. “It doesn’t matter,” she went on, as if fearing to see him vanish again, “all that matters is that you’re here with me now, that you’re here with us.” She took him by the arm, gently, as if warning him to be cautious as he approached her baby, and led him into the living room, where Antonello lay sleeping on a sofa, surrounded by cushions. This was the first time Dentino had seen his own son, and that tiny little creature, so peaceful and delicate, awakened a tenderness in him that moistened his eyes; Antonello emitted a scent of talc that instilled a moment of peace inside him.

  Dentino was tempted to pull aside the blanket and take Antonello into his arms, and even give him a kiss, perhaps, but then he was afraid he would awaken him, and so he decided to simply stroke his hair, already thick and black, exactly like his own. ’A Koala let him do as he wished, she’d been so afraid of losing her man, so afraid of having to raise the baby on her own. As soon as Dentino took a step back for another look at that tiny creature of his, ’a Koala threw her arms around him again and dragged him into the bedroom. When they’d first started dating, they spent hours on end in bed together, with her wrapped around his skinny body, while Dentino with one hand stroked her back from the nape of her neck to her ass. ’A Koala lay him down and clung to him in a way that was hers alone, a way that had once belonged to them both. She could sense that Dentino hadn’t come here for that—it was like hugging a log—but she hoped that it would be enough to win him back, to start over again. The three of them.

  Her images of the future were interrupted by Antonello’s sudden wailing. ’A Koala leaped to her feet; Dentino joined her as she took the baby’s diaper off. Reddish rays of sunlight poured in through the blinds, hitting the little one’s skin and turning it into the purest light. He looked like the Christ Child. But when ’a Koala lifted the baby’s onesie, Dentino noticed something that clashed with all the rest of the little vignette.

  “What did that, what is that thing?” he asked, stepping closer to Antonello. On his snowy-white flesh there was an unmistakable purplish bruise directly under his right nipple. A circle with a smaller circle right inside it, the edges ragged and uneven, as if the pressure exerted hadn’t been even, as if whoever had pressed the pistol against the baby hadn’t had the nerve to take matters to their logical conclusion.

  ’A Koala’s eyes glistened when she thought back to her son’s first day of life, which could so easily have also been his last. But she choked down the knot in her throat, and, putting diaper and onesie back on the little one with confident, quick movements of her hands, she said gently: “He’s fine now. The Madonna will protect him, you know, there’s no need to worry.”

  Dentino didn’t need to ask any other questions, he’d already glimpsed the whole scene in his mind’s eye. Just as he continued to see that bruise on his son’s body, floating before his eyes. Would it remain there forever, like a tattoo? A kiss of death. How long would Nicolas be afraid to pull the trigger? He couldn’t allow that; Nicolas wasn�
��t going to be allowed to count out the days of his son’s life with an hourglass.

  At the sight of Dentino’s face, disfigured by rage, ’a Koala had picked up Antonello and hugged him to her breast. The little boy had stopped wailing by now, but she went on rocking him just the same.

  “Giuseppe, calm down, you’re scaring me,” and she took two steps back.

  At that point, Dentino burst out in an incongruous laugh, as if she’d come up with a hilarious wisecrack. Certainly, she needed to be scared. He walked over to a cabinet, pushed aside a couple of lace doilies, and plunged his hand into a bowl full of coins, candies, and keys of every kind. He rummaged around in there for a little while until he found what he was looking for: the key to ’a Koala’s scooter. She’d buried it in there herself when she found out she was pregnant, and had locked up the scooter. Dentino laughed again, surprised he’d remembered this detail. “I have to go out,” he said. He ran out of the room, and, as he was passing by his son, ’a Koala took a step back, pressing Antonello even tighter against her breast. He wasn’t her Dentino anymore. Between sobs, she called ’o White, maybe he could talk some sense into him. His cell phone number rang and rang, once, twice, three times, but there was no answer; she felt like cursing, but of course there was no way she could turn to that piece-of-shit brother of hers.

  She sat down in the armchair, her baby in her arms, the sun setting, as if the two of them were alone in the entire city, just the two of them on the whole empty planet.

  HIGH SPEED

  “We need to be done with this idea that we’re the last link in the European chain!” “Naples is a great tourist city,” “Naples, jewel of the Mediterranean” … The voices echoing inside reached all the way out onto the little balcony of the New Maharaja to which he and he alone had access. A privé within the privé, a private room within the private room. You got to it through an emergency exit that Oscar had had installed to win him the favor of the project inspector. In reality, it wasn’t a way to anywhere, just a semicircular balcony that overlooked a sheer plunge down to the waters of the bay. Nicolas hadn’t brought anyone out there but Letizia; once they’d even had sex on that balcony, tangled against the wrought iron railing. All that fit in that cramped space was a lounge chair and a minibar powered by a cable that ran under the door.

  It was his haven on the few occasions when the New Maharaja was in use for some party, such as this evening. The lawyer Caiazzo—who had helped Nicolas and his crew get suspended sentences when they were convicted of dealing narcotics—had organized a reception for a few government bigwigs. His whole law firm was there, along with an assorted handful of local politicians and bureaucrats. It was the lawyer himself who’d written to him, a message that Nicolas had only half read, bored with the flattery that oozed out of every word. “I’d love to exchange a few words with the new prince of the city…” and so on and so forth. He hadn’t bothered to reply, but the lawyer just went on calling him. Nicolas turned off his phone. “Tonight I’m on vacation.”

  He’d failed with L’Arcangelo, but there had to be some way of getting his hands on the contact. “And if there is, I’ll find it, for sure.” He needed to recover, he needed to get back on top.

  He walked over to the parapet and stood with his back to the sea. He looked up and his legs began to shake. The looming wall of the sky was giving him that sense of vertigo. A weakness that had more to do with attraction than fear, a weakness he enjoyed inducing from time to time, as if to remind himself that he was still the master of his emotions.

  In the private room it was a continuous coming and going. Pesce Moscio had requisitioned all the bottles of Moët & Chandon because he had got it into his head to replicate a champagne pyramid he’d once seen in a commercial. He pushed his way through the guests at that party, announcing that on the other side of the club they were going without champagne for their toasts; after all, he said, the penguin should be along soon with more moetta. And sure enough, the waiter arrived, only to notice soon enough that that bottle, too, had vanished.

  Drago’ and Lollipop were standing in the doorway of the private room. They’d laid out three lines of cocaine on a little hand mirror they kept passing back and forth, ignoring the people going by right in front of them.

  “Mariposa cocaine makes you fly,” said Lollipop, and he snorted a whole line in a single snort, the way you fill your lungs with oxygen after being underwater for too long. Drago’, on the other hand, preferred a different technique, short, sharp snorts of coke in succession, fast, instantaneous. They were both fascinated to watch Briato’. He was wearing a pair of torn and tattered jeans, which he’d accompanied with a pair of loafers, worn without socks, and a purple dress shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. His look was completed by a walking stick with the pommel shaped like a silver skull. He brought it out only on special occasions, to give himself the tone of a British lord who could afford such an eccentricity.

  “Ua’, look who’s here, Count Dickhead!” exclaimed Lollipop, but Briato’ ignored him, running his hand over the head of hair he was letting grow out that he kept in order with gallons of hair product. He was buzzing around a young woman. Tightly bundled into a gray skirt suit, she seemed to have just stepped out of a business meeting.

  “Ua’, did someone lick your head?” asked Drago’.

  “What are you talking about,” said Drone’s girlfriend, who had watched the whole scene out of the corner of her eyes, “he’s the spitting image of Johnny Depp!”

  His confidence restored, Briato’ puffed up his chest and headed toward Drago’ and Lollipop, walking as if he owned the ground he walked on. He stopped between the two of them, his eyes laser-pointed on the mysterious young woman.

  “Thirty years old?” he asked.

  “Who knows,” said Drago’.

  “For sure she’s graduated from university,” Briato’ said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The glass. She holds it from the top. Another girl would hold it from the bottom.”

  “Sure,” Lollipop broke in. “Now you need a college degree to wear a pair of slut stiletto heels.”

  “Too gorgeous! Too gorgeous! I’m going in!” said Briato’, and he headed forward at the top speed his leg allowed him.

  “Oh, did you hurt yourself?” he asked the young blonde, overacting his concern.

  “Excuse me, what do you mean?” she replied, furrowing her brow in puzzlement.

  “No, I just want to know if I should call an ambulance.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she asked, increasingly on the defensive.

  “Did you hurt yourself, shining star, when you fell to earth from heaven?”

  She smiled, a white flash of teeth, then took half a step backward. Still, that simpleminded, overbearing charm amused her and flattered her at the same time.

  “My name is Valentina,” she said, and curtseyed by bending one leg, resting it on the calf of the other leg. She perched, balanced on that single narrow heel, as elegant as a flamingo. An irresistible pink flamingo. She looked like his twin soul, both of them perched on a single leg, so much so that for a fleeting instant, he himself felt light and elegant.

  “No one knows my real name,” Briato’ replied, “but I can tell you: Fabio.”

  She laughed again, this time more openly, so hard that she came close to spilling her mojito. Briato’ grabbed her wrist and placed his other hand on her hip. She didn’t pull away, but put both her heels flat on the floor, breaking the momentary enchantment. She asked him how old he was; she seemed curious.

  “Twenty-eight,” Briato’ ventured—he’d been about to say eighteen, but he just kept the eight and went for broke.

  “Oh, really? You look much younger. You’re lucky, you know?”

  “It’s just that you make me feel so much younger, Valentina.”

  Briato’ had let himself go, and now Valentina was shortening the distance between them. Solid marble, these tits, he thought to himself when h
e saw them up close.

  “And just what is it that you do for a living?” she asked, harpooning him with those intelligent eyes, from which ran a few lovely wrinkles.

  She had to be thirty years old, maybe a little younger. “I’m in business,” he replied.

  “In what area?

  “Flour, chocolate, taxes…”

  “What?”

  Briato’ took her by the hand. He led her to the bar and slammed a fist on the counter to draw the barman’s attention. “Friend, pack up the whole bar for the signorina here.” Then he turned to Valentina, who had in the meantime taken up a perch on a tall bar stool.

  “Do you want to go on vacation with me, Valentina?”

  “I don’t even know you!” she replied after a moment’s hesitation.

  Briato’ smiled. “What do you mean we don’t know each other, Valentina? I’ve seen you every time I lifted my eyes to heaven.”

  “Are you pulling my leg?”

  Briato’ pouted for a few seconds too long.

  “Is everything all right, Valentina?” asked a man in a suit and tie, a colleague who had immediately laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “The signorina is doing just fine. Do you have a problem?” Briato’ retorted. He’d replaced his playboy expression with one straight off the street; all it required was for him to squint slightly and harden the features of his face. And Valentina didn’t miss that transformation. Her colleague ignored Briato’ and addressed her once again. “Is everything okay?”