The plane came down quickly and landed with a slight bump that gave Cary a jolt to the stomach. Finally it stopped and its engines came to a standstill.
When the door of the military aircraft opened up on the bright daylight, Cary narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders. Then a smile known to millions of people settled on his lips. He put on his sunglasses, picked up his bag and walked towards the light.
The words echoed in his heart: ‘Hey, I’m back!’
Il Resto del Carlino, 19.4.1954
Easter Day in Rome
Condemnation of atomic weapons in Pontiff ’s message
Il Resto del Carlino, 26.4.1954
Communist pressure mounts in Dien Bien Phu
Giap’s proclamation to the Viet Minh troops: ‘The hour of victory has sounded’
Asian conference opens today in Geneva
Uncertain fate for Korea and Indochina
Il Resto del Carlino, 27.04.1954
The fate of Indochina dominates negotiations at the Geneva conference
Il Resto del Carlino, 28.04.1954
Tito’s intransigence obstructs a solution for Trieste
L’Unità, 29.4.1954
Exhumation of Wilma Montesi’s corpse
L’Unità, 3.5.1954
Asiatic Premiers call for peace in Indochina
Recognition of China and abolition of atomic weapons
L’Unità, 5.5.1954
Ho Chi Minh’s delegates come to Geneva to open negotiations for peace in Vietnam
Il Resto del Carlino, 5.5.1954
Dien Bien Phu falls after twenty-hour battle
Part Two: McGuffin Electric
home
Chapter 1
Naples, Agnano racetrack, 3 May
Life’s a pile of shit. So is death. Dying with your face in horseshit. I’m bricking it. What can I do what can I do what can I do? I start shouting, I’m bricking it, I implore St Anne who’s abandoned me, all the Madonnas I caused to weep and now they’re taking their revenge, I implore their forgiveness, yes, I’m pissing myself, forgive me forgive me forgive me Holy Mother and Steven Cement.
They’re going to hurt me, mamma mia why? They’re going to make me long for this shitty, icy cell. What can I do now that my luck’s run out, what did I do?
He just slapped me once and now I can’t hear out of my left ear, my eye hurts and my cheek stings like St Anthony’s fire. He’s tied me to this chair, he’s walking back and forth, an animal, snorting like the nearby horses, Jesus, he’s thinking about how to finish me off.
What lousy luck, what a bloody awful way to go! Salvatore Pagano known as Kociss, who hasn’t said a word, I swear on my mother’s life and all the saints, who knows what he’s been told, some grass or other, not a word, what did I know, it was that pig of a police commissioner Cinquegrana dumped me in it, he was the one, cursed be his children to the seventh generation! Those questions about Don Luciano, Cement, everyone will have heard them, he dumped right on me, the disgusting swine. But I never said a word! Everyone knows that Kociss doesn’t speak to guards or grasses or gravediggers.
I’d really like to tell Sister Titina, right now, because she always told me that I would live for a hundred years at least, because ‘Christ doesn’t want sad flesh’, isn’t that right, Sister Titina, so what do you say to this? Go and tell that to Steve Cement, or bring Jesus Christ down here, right now, Sister Titina, right now this minute.
So are you saying I’m crazy? That I was going around blabbing my mouth off about Don Luciano? Why are you doing this, I don’t know a thing, my Lisetta, I didn’t say anything, shame about that dress I bought you, what a catastrophe, and the pure silk trousers, you were happy, don’t cry, never again will I smell your sweet fragrance that drives me out of my mind, Jesus, never again will I see Lisetta’s curly head jiggling as she laughs, don’t cry, that fawn’s muzzle saying, ‘Salvato’, you’re mad, you are!’
And what if he wasn’t that resolute?
Why hasn’t he killed me yet? Maybe some fuckhead, some absolute bastard gave them my name and told them I was in jail, but without saying ‘that guy’s been singing’, no, just for the sake of saying something, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just that he hasn’t made his mind up where to chuck the corpse, mamma mia, no!
No, no, we don’t know for sure that he’s going to kill you, take a good look at him, Salvato’, he’s as pissed off as a holymotherofgod, he’s snorting like a steamboat, but he seems to be thinking about other things, other matters.
Think, go on, think, Salvato’, quickly, think of something that will save your life, bawl your eyes out, fuck up his brain, anything at all, because otherwise you can forget all about Lisetta and this shitty life.
Steel myself. I’ve got to steel myself, and talk. Talk and say, ‘Signor Cement it’s all a terrible mistake. Salvatore Pagano known as Kociss is an admirer and Don Luciano’s devoted servant and yours as well, and never, ever, ever could he say a bad thing about you. ’
Yes, I need to steel myself, my throat’s dry, my eye hurts, steel yourself, come on, and I stink.
‘A-hhm, Mister Cement, lissentumi —’
‘Shut up, shithead! Where is that fucking TV?’
The television?
‘Mistestiv, don’t worry, I’ll get it straight away, sure, don’ you worry, if that’s all it is, I bring it back, no worry!’
The television. But how on earth could it be his?
Chapter 2
Bologna, ‘Seventh Heaven’, 5 May
The queue of people going into the dancehall started in the Piazza VIII Agosto. ‘Seventh Heaven’ was going to be packed to the rafters.
The musketeers weren’t impressed, and stood on their pedals to get up the slope like Coppi on the last stretch of the Gavia, Brando at the head, Sticleina and Gigi sprinting along, and Pierre bringing up the rear on the racing bike borrowed by Bortolotti.
‘What the fuck did they do to you in Yugoslavia, brainwash you? You’re not like yourself!’ Brando had observed a few days after his return.
As he pedalled, Pierre reflected that his friend was right. There was something strange: Bologna no longer seemed the same. But in the course of that week, what on earth could have happened? Nothing, the usual stuff: two punch-ups on 1 May, the thousand-mile driver who’d knocked over a kid in Via Murri, Bologna FC’s victory. No, there was no getting round it, it was he who had changed. Wasn’t Fanti always saying that seeing new places renews the eyes?
He thought once again of his dinner that day, at Aunt Iolanda’s, with Nicola. After the roast meat, his brother had risen from the table, saying he was taking a stroll to help his digestion. The truth was that he didn’t want to hear his brother’s stories about his trip to Yugoslavia. He had told Aunt Iolanda everything, even about the strange absolution with which he had left his father. She was a fine woman, Iolanda, almost a mother to him. He had never realised how similar she was to her brother Vittorio, the same eyes, the same shape of chin. She was just a bit younger, but she had the wisdom of someone much older. Not the mean wisdom of the countryside, no, something like a kind of common sense acquired over the years, when you’re someone who has seen war, the evil that men do, someone who has been in love but never married. When he looked back, to his childhood, Pierre saw her as a rock. The only person he would never leave, always able to cope with even the most critical situations.