Still, the box kept moving, and when Letizia heard those words, rather than relax she got more worried. While she held her belly with one hand, Lollipop and Tucano lifted the flaps of the carton.
Nicolas leaned over, at last a gift that aroused his curiosity at least somewhat; the expression on his face was one of heartfelt surprise: “Ua’,” he shouted.
The tiger was a frightened cub with a sweet face, and was now lying at the bottom of the box with its large paws side by side, as if waiting for a cuddle. Nicolas reached out his hand and unhesitatingly stroked its head, pressing his thumb onto the stripes that grew denser toward the top of its head. The animal put up no resistance.
Letizia had stood up and, still holding her belly, taken two steps back. “What are we going to do with this wild animal, Nico’? Where are we going to keep it?”
“On the roof, my love,” Nicolas replied. “We’ll have a cage built.”
Lollipop launched a full-throated chant of “Long live the newlyweds, long live the tiger,” and the New Maharaja echoed with the cheers and applause. Nicolas lifted the tiger so that Letizia could pet it, too, but she recoiled, because the last thing she wanted was that wild animal next to her belly.
Sveva, though, hand in hand with Pesce Moscio, envied Letizia that gift and started scratching the tiger cub behind the ears, whispering sweet words to it.
“The guy at the circus who sold it to me told me you need to feed it milk,” said Tucano, who had gone to get the tiger to bring it to the party. Drone walked over to a young matron who was pushing a stroller back and forth, and returned with a baby bottle. While Tucano was feeding the tiger, thereby attracting flocks of young women who were dying to take a selfie with the cub, the DJ had already started the music and the party continued.
“Wait, is this tiger a boy or a girl?” Drone asked at a certain point, his head tipped to one side to peek between the animal’s legs and answer his own question.
Tucano glared daggers at him, as if he’d doubted his own son. But then the doubt began to make its way into his mind, too, and together they started trying to determine the tiger’s gender.
“Huh … now that you mention it, this tiger doesn’t have a dick,” they all agreed.
“You’re right, it doesn’t have one,” Lollipop confirmed.
“But it has a pair of balls,” Tucano pointed out.
“Call whoever sold you the tiger!” Carlito’s Way suggested, and Tucano took his suggestion immediately.
“Hey, did you sell me a tigress?” he shouted into the iPhone, and then, after a couple of “Ah, ah, I understand’s,” in a steadily descending tone, he ended the call and loudly announced: “He says that he has a retractile penis.”
“It has what?”
“Yeah, just like Pesce Moscio!” And everyone burst out laughing, even Pesce Moscio.
“So what are we calling him?”
“Napule,” Nicolas promptly replied. “Naples, because Naples is a tiger.”
“Ua’,” said Tucano, and climbed up on a table to declaim: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder,” and then jumped down to join the paranza’s group hug: “Together! Together! Together!”
* * *
The party lasted until dawn, until there was no one at the New Maharaja but the Piranhas and Susamiello with the other kids, who were all in the kitchen cleaning up. Nicolas, exhausted, had just taken Letizia to bed. One last toast with his friends, and he’d join her. Sitting on the usual low couch, he had Briato’ pass him the tiger cub. The animal snuggled up tamely to its master, but then with a swipe of the paw, it clawed him under the ear. An inch-long red stripe sank into Nicolas’s neck, and he instinctively released his grip. Finally free, the young tiger started running through the club, pursued by the members of the paranza, who, half drunk and half exhausted, clumsily tried to catch it. They managed to flush him out from under an amplifier after a good ten minutes. Nicolas had remained seated on the couch, and when Tucano brought the tiger cub back to him, he was afraid the Maraja was going to slaughter the poor animal. Instead Nicolas pulled his bloodstained hand away from his neck and showed the wound to the rest of the paranza.
“Ua’, that’s too cool! The tiger cut!”
“I want it, too!” said Lollipop, and knelt down before the tiger.
“Scratch me, scratch me, little tiger cub!” cried Tucano, shoving Lollipop aside, because, all things considered, he was the one who’d had the idea of the tiger in the first place. The young tiger tried to back into Nicolas’s arms, but then it sensed that its new owner was pushing it forward and it lunged with a razor-claw that sliced open Tucano’s eyebrow.
“Ua’, that bastard practically took out my eye,” Tucano shouted to a general burst of laughter.
And in the early light of dawn, the paranza set out in the Rolls-Royce. Heading for the emergency room.
PART THREE
YOU WHO EDUCATE
You who have educated your children to be respectful and obedient. You who have educated them to censor their curse words, not to cheat on tests and homework, not to steal their playfellows’ toys. You who have educated them to listen to the points of view of others and always to try to reconcile disagreements: to get their way without bullying, to think that violence is unjust.
You who have tried to teach them that good outcomes are the result of great effort and determination.
You who have educated your children by assuring them plenty of love, enough money, trying to discipline them and not spoil them. Urging them to be physically fit and active, preparing them for the larger world by teaching them languages, arming them with tolerance, massaging them with music, giving them examples of an upright, rigorous approach to life.
You, who have educated your children in this fashion, you’ve gotten it all wrong. You’ve given your children the promise of a just world they will never see.
* * *
And you others, who have educated your children to be mistrustful. You, who have educated them to be capable of beating their fellow man before he can beat them. You, who have had no desire to lend a gentle hand, to be understanding. You, who have educated by showing them the differences between people, explaining that no one is the same as anyone else, and that black, yellow, white, and mulatto are all at war with one another. That living in harmony is the hypocritical art of the profiteers. You, who have educated them to do business, always and in every case. Well, you haven’t prepared young soldiers, you haven’t taken it to its logical conclusion. That’s only viciousness—which is a form of weakness. On Mount Taygets, where according to legend the Spartan people chose between the fit and the unfit children, your offspring would have been found wanting and left to die. You educated them to be like you, knowing that they’d have you behind them. Feeling at fault for every penny you refused them, feeling yourself somehow inadequate for every achievement they failed to attain. For every trophy that proved to be out of reach, you felt that somehow you had missed the target.
You, too, have failed. You have promised your children, brought up to lust and covet, a world where they could win their place, but they never will, power will elude them as long as you are around.
* * *
You who have educated them for peace and for war, for the good and the bad, friendship and cunning, hugs and cruelty. You who have educated them according to the rules of this world, rules that are neither good nor bad: the rules of the winners. Your children will be exactly like those rules, neither good nor bad, they’ll be identical to the world in which you’ve brought them up, in which you’ve educated them. The world of the winners. If you want the best for your children, you’re reiterating the worst.
But now your children are taking back what the preceding generations long denied them: the truth.
MASS
The heroin deliveries had always come in punctually: once a week, Nicolas received a picture of a death announcement poster, usually an off-kilter, out-of-focus photograph, probably taken fro
m a moving motor scooter, but clear enough to make out the scheduled time of the funeral services. The church was always the same, in Cercola, just outside the city: a safe place in Scignacane’s view, an anonymous little town, though if you looked down on a map you had the impression that the township stood directly atop Micione’s base of power, which had once belonged to L’Arcangelo, though it no longer did. The dearly departed, however, changed with every delivery: Scignacane in person enjoyed going online and consulting the death announcements of L’Eco di Bergamo, from a town in the north, and he’d download those unsuspecting, no-longer-living faces, rechristening them with distinctly southern names. Then it became the duty of a cooperative priest to await the hearse and keep the two or three little old ladies who frequented the church at a safe distance, explaining to them that the family wished to show the respect due to their late and lamented relative, and that therefore funeral services would be held behind closed doors. The little old ladies would withdraw, reciting under their breath, “Oh Lord, you who have made us participants in the mystery of Christ crucified…” while behind those doors, Scignacane and his men were clearing the coffin of the flowers and the funeral drapery and waiting for the Piranhas to enter through a side doorway. What came next was the exchange: to Nicolas and his paranza the hollow plastic Kinder eggs full of heroin transported to that church inside the coffin, and to Scignacane a backpack full of cash.
In the building of the Acanfora clan, La Zarina walked into her son’s bedroom without knocking. He was catching a nap, but she threw open the curtains, swung wide the windows, and switched on the light.
Scignacane put his pillow over his face, hoping to win himself a few more minutes of peace.
“Alfredo, ’o Pagliaccio is furious,” she said through clenched teeth. She was wilted, a shadow of her former self, but she stubbornly continued to pose as a cougar with push-up bras that tried to burst out of unbuttoned blouses to show off the disaster beneath.
“’O Pagliaccio is pissed off,” La Zarina repeated.
“So what?” Scignacane replied. He grabbed the pillow again, this time to put it behind his back as he struggled into a seated position. “He’s always pissed off.”
“Ah, is that so? Well, this time, he’s got good company because I’m pissed off too!” she shouted. “’O Pagliaccio was here, you get that? He asked me if I could ‘kindly’ ask you why the load this time was so much bigger.”
Scignacane ran his hand over the stump of his missing ear, a habit that he’d developed at times when his nerves were on edge. The Tsarina, instead of feeling even a hint of tenderness, interpreted that touch as tantamount to a confession.
“What the fuck are you up to?” She attacked him, shaking him by the shoulders. “Tell me, you fucking wretch, who have you started selling to on the side?” But now her boy had jammed his head between his knees and was just trying to mumble: “Keep cool, Ma, it’s nothing…”
“Nothing, is it? ’O Pagliaccio didn’t shoot anybody this time. This time, he just wants to know who you’re giving it to, that extra weight.”
Never show up where ’o Pagliaccio can see you with the full load; he thought he’d made that clear to the new hands, but maybe he hadn’t. And maybe he shouldn’t have delegated the task to others. His father, ’o Negus, had been right, it was always better to do business in person, even in the most no-account dealings, but Scignacane was a broker, his job was to negotiate with his contacts in Afghanistan, it’s not like he could spend his life driving a delivery truck.
“It’s all under control, Ma, I’ll settle it myself,” he said, getting out of bed and patting her on the cheek.
“That would be better,” said La Zarina. “You’re working with Maraja, right? I don’t like that. I don’t like it one little bit. Your father wouldn’t have liked it either: we’ve always worked on an exclusive basis with Micione. Everyone knows it, it’s practically written in the school textbooks. ’O Negus, God rest his soul, you know what he’d assured us of? No trouble, peace of mind. Why do we keep these buildings? Because we sell to Micione, and nobody else. We’re alive because we’re protected.”
“I got you, Ma,” said Scignacane, but La Zarina wasn’t done. She struck her last blow: “Who avenged your father’s death, when that piece of shit L’Arcangelo killed him?”
“Micione,” Scignacane replied in a low voice.
“Exactly, Micione,” said La Zarina. “We need to show him respect, and in order to respect your father, we need to respect this agreement.” The Tsarina stepped close to her son: “And that guy, Maraja, thinks he’s the king of Naples. Look what he’s done to you, look what your old buddy’s done to you.” And with one hand she brushed the flap of flesh that had once held an ear.
He pushed her hand away in annoyance. “I told you I’ll take care of everything, Ma.” And, grabbing his smartphone, he left the room.
Scignacane
The shop is closed for business
Maraja
For how long?
Scignacane
For good
Maraja
But we’re the ones who made it what it is!!!
Scignacane
It’s what Mamma wants
Nicolas tried to get in touch with Scignacane every way he could, but he’d blocked him from everything. Expelled on WhatsApp, banished on Facebook, bounced back on voice mail. He hurried to Piazza Bellini. He found Pesce Moscio talking to some guys, and Drone was there, too. Pesce Moscio couldn’t figure out why everybody wanted to smoke their heroin, instead of injecting it into their veins, and when he saw Nicolas he said to him, “Maraja, everyone here is trying to be a Taliban,” and he smiled.
“Guagliu’,” said Nicolas, stepping off to one side with his men. “That piece of shit Scignacane has shut off the supplies.”
Pesce Moscio and Drone assumed this must be a joke of some kind. If up till then they’d had one trustworthy partner who would never leave them high and dry, that had been Scignacane.
“Nico’,” said Drone, as if he were continuing what Pesce Moscio had said, and refusing to believe it, “around here it’s like we’re in Afghanistan, with the poppy plants…”
Nicolas spat between his feet. “I’m not kidding around. He’s stopped selling to us.”
Pesce Moscio lost his smile. “What are you saying? All I have left is a single package…”
“We need to talk to him,” said Drone.
“That bastard has blocked me on Facebook, and on WhatsApp. He’s out of reach, in his castle.” He spat on the ground again, but this time, far away, against a flowerpot, in disgust for the piazza that Scignacane was sending to the bottom of the sea.
“But we have his money,” said Drone.
“What money?” Nicolas asked.
“A hundred thousand euros that we still haven’t paid him. You watch, he’ll come for it.”
Money is always a good reason to talk, thought Nicolas, and he told Drone to send a message to Scignacane, because he couldn’t have blocked the accounts of all the members of the paranza. To let him know at this point that if the shop had really gone out of business, then all its debts were null and void, too.
“Guagliu’,” Nicolas concluded, “we have to…” But Pesce Moscio didn’t seem convinced.
“We don’t talk to him. We put him out of his misery. That bastard. How can he do this? Doesn’t he show any respect? We give him plenty of money, outside his market because Micione forces him to sell to him alone, and instead of thanking us—”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Nicolas tried to get a word in.
This time it was Pesce Moscio who spat on the ground: “Hold on, Nico’, what do you love better, your mamma or money?”
Nicolas looked at him, uncomprehending, while Drone answered for him. “If we don’t make money, then even our mothers will turn their backs on us. Children aren’t worth a fucking thing. People love you only if it’s in their self-interest.”
“Scignacane must
die,” said Pesce Moscio.
“But we can’t go up against La Zarina,” said Nicolas.
“Why not? Just us, alone against everyone.” Drone had grabbed one of Nicolas’s arms and one of Pesce Moscio’s, and started pulling them toward him.
Nicolas nodded. “All right. But we don’t need to do it.”
“Then who?”
* * *
Drone immediately found the right contact. Instagram. Scignacane had posted a picture of his new motorcycle, a Honda CBR Fireblade, up on its kickstand. He was seated on the bike, leaning over the handlebars as if he were roaring down a straightaway at 125 m.p.h., and behind him, arms wrapped around him, was his new girlfriend, who for the occasion was wearing a short-short skirt, with her stay-ups in plain view. The caption read “Great bike!” and Drone immediately replied: “So to celebrate that skyrocket of a bike, are all our old debts forgiven? If so, we drink to your health.”
“The fuck they are,” Scignacane wrote back just a few seconds later.
“Usual church. Tomorrow. We’ll settle up.”
* * *
Pesce Moscio greeted Don Carmelo with all the respect due to a man of the cloth, and he replied instinctively, the way you respond to someone who comes up behind you while you’re locking up your church, after a long day of hearing confession, organizing meetings at the parish rec center, masses, gatherings, and visits to the elderly in town. “I’m closing up, see the schedule for visiting times.”
“Fuck! Are you the secretary to Jesus? The Madonna’s cousin?”
Don Carmelo turned around and realized that he’d be well advised to hold his tongue. Pesce Moscio continued along the same line: “Don Carmelo, beautiful car you have. Same for the house, the only thing missing is a swimming pool. Cercola Beach.”
Savage Kiss Page 34
