Lucania is also said to be implicated in the smuggling of cigarettes from Tangiers to Italy, or to have financed that activity. In April 1951, he was with Contessa Iolanda Adorni Campagnoli at the Hotel London, in Naples. The woman in question was an associate of known cigarette smuggler Sol Charles Mirenda, a United States citizen, and Alvey Sheldon, the British subject who owns (it is believed) the well-known smuggling ship Sayon-Miami-Flo.
It is claimed that Lucania is a habitual opium smoker, and that he uses a pipe.
Chapter 5
Bologna, 7 May
Dizzy Gillespie filled the room with blue flames, like the flames of a Bunsen burner, hanging in mid-air, then down, towards the floor, notes hanging from tiny parachutes. ‘Good Bait’, a searing melody, short solos alternating with reprises of the theme, and you can’t help snapping your fingers.
Robespierre Capponi had finished telling his story, a little Dalmatian odyssey enriched with scenes worthy of Tom Mix or Roy Rogers and featuring an incongruous appearance by Cary Grant. Fanti was turning around in his hands a copy of a book in English, with a garish cover: Casino Royale. The first five pages full of underlined words, as though someone was deciphering a coded message.
‘They’re the words I had to look up in the dictionary. Can you see that I didn’t make it all up; where would I find a book like that? You can’t get it in Bologna, or in Yugoslavia.’
‘I believe you, Pierre. It’s all too confused and difficult for anyone to make up. The English lessons are starting to bear fruit, I can see that.’
In English: ‘I guess they do.’
Cary Grant in Yugoslavia for a film about Tito. Really curious. He would have to think about that.
‘Show me this pigeon, Pierre.’
Young Capponi held up the cage he was holding between his legs. Inside was a creature with dark-grey plumage. A bit thin and slightly bald, but a good specimen nonetheless.
‘Have you kept it in there ever since you got back?
‘I was worried it would fly home without a message. And I don’t want that to happen. I already know what to write to my father, but I don’t know how big the paper should be, or how to attach it to the pigeon’s leg, I could tie it with wire and it would fall off. You’re a pigeon-fancier, so —’
‘Fine, I’ll show you later. Sorry, I’ve got to change the record.’
Gillespie and his combo had finished their track, the needle clicked at the end of the groove. Fanti raised his arm, lifted the disc and put it back in its sleeve. The void was filled by a more recent piece, 23 Degrees North and 82 Degrees West, by the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Latitude and longitude of Havana, capital of Cuba. It announced the exploration of the Caribbean and its exotic rhythms, midway between Spain and Africa. Twenty-three degrees north and 82 degrees west: according to Kenton, the coordinates of the future.
‘Professore, I expected to find more people who spoke Italian.’
‘I think that many of them, although they can speak the language, refuse to do so. After all, as far as the Slavs are concerned, it was the language of the invaders, they forced them to speak it during the racist “italianisation” programme: surnames were changed, schoolchildren were obliged to answer in Italian so as not to be beaten by the fascist teachers. I’m not surprised they want nothing to do with it. To understand how much they have suffered, you just have to look at the revenge they took in Istria, throwing people into holes in the ground.’
‘Ah, the Italians they killed and threw into those deep holes in the limestone.’
Fanti didn’t reply, and watched the music. In the bass, intricate horn riffs charging full tilt to the first break. It was like watching them diving into the sea from a cliff. Holding their breath. The trombone solo advanced like a flame along a fuse, to the explosion of the sax, like the space rockets you see in the newsreels. A new pause, a full horn section, furious phrasing to the final apotheosis, the whole orchestra as one, a colossal club whose blows struck the song as though it were a sacrificial animal being led to the sacrifice. The drum roll the body’s last spasm before the death blow. The end.
‘A frenzy! What do you think, Pierre?’
‘Fantastic. It’s like a mambo, but more complicated. And very hard to dance to.’
‘To get back to those holes: they didn’t have it in for the Italians as such, Pierre. Sure, many innocent people ended up in those holes, but many of them were fascists, collaborationists, informers, people who had enabled the Germans to capture and torture the partisans, carry out massacres, burn whole villages. After 8 September the whole region was effectively annexed to the Third Reich. They were no longer content with taking the k’s and the j ’s out of people’s Slavonic surnames, or rapping children over the knuckles. An indescribable repression was unleashed. No one who has collaborated in an act of slaughter can expect the victims’ relations to show mercy when they manage to get their hands on you. Even around your way, in Imola, the people responsible for the Pozzo Becca massacre were lynched by the crowd.’
‘Yes, I know. My brother was out in the streets that day.’
Fanti took a sip of Lung Ching Dragon’s Well, a sweet liquorice aftertaste. For a while they talked about Tito, Djilas, Trieste, the Communist Party line on Yugoslavia, then Fanti looked at the pigeon and lost himself in fantasies about the journeys it had taken and those still to be travelled, accompanied by reminiscences of his life with his wife, the years spent in England. His mind landed across the Channel, while his eardrums languished in the Caribbean.
Pierre could not shake off his torpor, and went on drinking his tea, beating out Stan Kenton’s rhythm on his left thigh until the music stopped.
Fanti came to, muttered a phrase of apology, got to his feet and changed the record. Bud Powell’s elegant ‘Sure Thing’ accompanied him as he took off his dressing gown and put on his jacket.
‘Come on, let’s go up to the pigeon loft. I’ll show you how the amazing pigeon post works.’
And so it was that Josip III, scion of a family of intrepid flyers, grandson of a heroic courier in the partisan war, set off on his return journey to Dubrovnik.
Chapter 6
Palm Springs, California, 7 May
Cary told her everything, including the bit about the swapped coats. Retrospective worry for Betsy. Whole-grain rice and macrobiotic food, welcome home. Darling, you risked being injured, you risked death. But I’m alive, and I’m fine. If I’d known. What would you have done? I wouldn’t have advised you to. It’s all over, Betsy, and I’m fine. I called Hitch. I’m going to do the film. I feel strange, darling. I know, I know, I would feel like that too if I knew what sort of close shave you’d had. I don’t know how. But if you’d been involved in a railway accident, or, what do I know, a shipwreck. Don’t say it even as a joke. It’s bad luck. To change the subject: what did Mr Bondurant get up to while I was away? Betsy tells Cary about the photograph sent to the newspapers. A blunder. Mr Raymond thought it might reinforce the credibility. But the regimental tie? Mr Bondurant bought it, poor thing. He was so fond of it. He felt dreadful when he found out you were cross about it. I’ll send him a telegram full of apologies and thanks. Will you really? Of course? You know, he’s a good person, he’s simple and he’s honest. He’ll have gone back to his own life now. He was Cary Grant, and he can’t tell anyone anything about it. But just think, he’ll have material for his imitations, genuine material, not like those people who imitate you and say ‘Judy, Judy, Judy. ’ in that hateful tone. You’ve never even said that line. Not in any film or any radio show.