He read and savored each line as if he were in front of the corpse, as if touching it, as if he were at Taverna Moriggi and, instead of shank of pork with sauerkraut, he was slavering over that orbital region where the eyeball appeared deflated and torn with complete discharge of the vitreous humor, as if he were savoring the pons, the mesencephalus, the lower part of the cerebral lobes, as if he were exulting over the emergence of the almost liquefied brain matter.
I was disgusted, but—I cannot deny it—fascinated by him and by the martyred corpse over which he exulted, in the same way readers of nineteenth-century novels were hypnotized by the gaze of the serpent. To put an end to his exultation, I said, “It’s the autopsy on . . . well, it could be anyone.”
“Exactly. You see, my theory was correct: Mussolini’s corpse wasn’t that of Mussolini, and in any case, no one could swear it was his. I’m now reasonably clear about what happened between April 25 and 30.”
That evening I really felt the need to cleanse myself, be with Maia. And to distance her in my mind from the other members of the team, I decided to tell her the truth, that Domani would never be published.
“It’s better that way,” said Maia. “I won’t have to worry about the future. We’ll hold out for a few months, earn ourselves those few lire—few, filthy, and fast—and then the South Seas.”
XIII, Late May
MY LIFE WAS NOW RUNNING along parallel lines. By day the humiliating existence at the newspaper, in the evening Maia’s little apartment, also mine sometimes. Saturdays and Sundays to Lake Orta. The evenings compensated us both for days spent with Simei. Maia had given up making suggestions that would only be rejected, and confined herself to sharing them with me, for amusement, or for consolation.
One evening she showed me a lonelyhearts magazine. “Great,” she said, “except that I’d love to try publishing them with the subtext.”
“In what way?”
“This way: ‘Hi, I’m Samantha, twenty-nine years old, professionally qualified, housewife, separated, no children, seeking a man, attractive, bright, and sociable.’ Subtext: I’m now thirty. After my husband left, I had no luck finding a job with the bookkeeping diploma I worked hard to get. I am stuck at home all day twiddling my thumbs. (I don’t even have any brats to look after.) I’m looking for a man, he doesn’t have to be handsome, provided he doesn’t knock me around like that bastard I married.
“Or: ‘Carolina, age thirty-three, unmarried, graduate, businesswoman, sophisticated, dark hair, slim, confident and sincere, interested in sports, movies, theater, travel, reading, dancing, open to new experiences, would like to meet interesting man with personality, education and good position, professional, executive or military, max. sixty years with view to marriage.’ Subtext: At thirty-three I’m still on the shelf, perhaps because I’m skinny as a rake and would like to be blond but try not to worry about it.
I struggled to get an arts degree but couldn’t get a job with it, so I set up a small workshop where I employ three Albanians, paid in cash; we produce socks for the local market stalls. I don’t really know what I like, I watch some television, go to the movies with a friend or to the local amateur dramatic society, I read the newspaper, especially the lonelyhearts pages, I like dancing but don’t have anyone to take me, and to land a husband I’m prepared to take an interest in anything, so long as there’s money so I can ditch the socks and the Albanians. I don’t mind if he’s old, an accountant if possible, but I’d also settle for a registry clerk or a retired policeman.
“Or this one: ‘Patrizia, age forty-two, single, shopkeeper, dark, slender, sweet and sensitive, would like to meet a man who is loyal, kind and sincere, marital status unimportant so long as he’s motivated.’ Subtext: Hell, at forty-two (and with a name like Patrizia I must be going on fifty, like every other Patrizia), not married, I make ends meet with the haberdashery shop my poor mother left me. I am slightly anorexic and basically neurotic; is there a man out there who will take me to bed? Doesn’t matter whether he’s married or not, so long as he fucks well.
“And again: ‘Still hoping there’s a woman capable of true love. I’m a bachelor, bank clerk, age twenty-nine, reasonably good-looking and a lively character, seeking a pretty girl, serious, educated, able to sweep me off my feet.’ Subtext: I don’t really get along with women, the few I’ve met were morons, all they wanted was to get married. They say I have a lively character because I tell them exactly where to get off. I’m not a complete jerk, so isn’t there some sex bomb who doesn’t pop her gum and say ‘dese’ and ‘dose,’ who’s up for a good fuck without expecting too much else?”
“You don’t seriously want Simei to publish stuff like that. Or rather, the announcements might be okay, but not your interpretations!”
“I know, I know,” said Maia, “but there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.”
Then, as we were falling asleep, she said, “You who know everything, do you know why they say ‘Lose Trebizond and clash the cymbals’?”
“No, I don’t, but is this the kind of question to ask at midnight?”
“Well, I actually do know. There are two explanations. One is that since Trebizond was the main port on the Black Sea, if trading ships lost their way to Trebizond, it meant losing the money invested in the voyage. The other, which seems more likely, is that Trebizond was the navigation point ships looked for, and losing sight of it meant losing direction, or your bearings, or where you’re going.
As for ‘clash the cymbals,’ which is commonly used to mean a state of drunkenness, the etymological dictionary tells us that it originally meant being excessively lively, was used by Pietro Aretino, and comes from Psalm 150, Laudate eum in cymbalis bene sonantibus, ‘Praise him with the clash of cymbals.’”
“Look who I’ve ended up with. You’re so curious, how did you deal for so long with celebrity romances?”
“For money, filthy lucre. It happens when you’re a loser.” She held me closer. “But I’m less of a loser now that I’ve won you in the lottery.”
What do you do with a screwball like that, other than go back to making love? And in doing so, I felt almost a winner.
We hadn’t been watching television on the evening of the twenty-third, so it was only the following day that we read in the papers about the killing of the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. We were shocked and, next morning at the office, also visibly upset.
Costanza asked Simei whether we shouldn’t do an issue on the assassination. “Let’s think about it,” said Simei doubtfully. “If we talk about the death of Falcone, we have to talk about the Mafia, complain about the lack of policing, things like that. Right away we make enemies with the police and with the Cosa Nostra.
I don’t know whether the Commendatore would like that. When we start a real newspaper, and a magistrate is blown up, then we’ll certainly have to comment on it, and in commenting on it we’re immediately in danger of putting forward ideas that will be contradicted a few days later. That’s a risk a real newspaper has to run, but why us now?
The wiser course, even for a real newspaper, is generally to keep it sentimental, to interview the relatives. If you watch carefully, that’s what they do on TV when they go doorstepping the mother whose ten-year-old son has been killed in a tank of acid: How do you feel, signora, about your son’s death? People shed a few tears and everyone’s happy. Like that lovely German word Schadenfreude, pleasure at other people’s misfortune, a sentiment that a newspaper has to respect and nurture. But for the moment we don’t have to concern ourselves with these miseries, and indignation should be left to left-wing newspapers, that’s their specialty.
Besides, it’s not such incredible news. Magistrates have been killed before, and they’ll be killed again. We’ll have plenty of good opportunities. For the moment let’s hold back.”
Falcone having been eliminated twice over, we turned to more serious matters.
Braggadocio came up to me, gave me a nudge: “See? This whole business confirms my story.”
“What the hell has it got to do with your story?”
“I don’t know yet, but it’s got to have something to do with it. Everything always fits with everything else, you just have to know how to read the coffee grounds. Give me time.”
XIV, Wednesday, May 27
ONE MORNING, AS SHE WOKE UP, Maia said, “But I don’t much like him.”
By now I was ready for her synaptic games.
“You’re talking about Braggadocio,” I said.
“Of course, who else?” Then, almost as an afterthought, “How did you figure that out?”
“My dear, as Simei would say, the two of us know a total of six people in common. I thought of the one who’d been the rudest to you and hit on Braggadocio.”
“I could have been thinking about, I don’t know, President Cossiga.”
“But you weren’t, you were thinking of Braggadocio. And
