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.”
14
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 anyway, for once I’ve caught your train of thought, so why do you want to complicate matters?”
“See how you’re beginning to think what I think?”
And, damn it, she was right.
“Queers,” announced Simei that morning at the daily editorial meeting. “Queers are a subject that always attracts attention.”
“You don’t say ‘queer’ anymore,” ventured Maia. “You say ‘gay,’ no?”
“I know, my dear, I know.” Simei was irritated. “But our readers still say ‘queer,’ or rather, they think it, since it disgusts them even to say it. I know you don’t say ‘Negro’ any longer but ‘black.’ You don’t say ‘blind’ but ‘visually impaired.’ But a black is still black, and a visually impaired person can’t see a lucifer, poor thing. I’ve nothing against queers, same as Negroes, for me they are absolutely fine so long as they mind their own business.”
“So why write about gays if our readers find them disgusting?”
“I’m not thinking about queers in general, my dear, I’m all for freedom, everyone can do as they please. But some of them are in politics, in parliament, and in government. People think queers are just writers and ballet dancers, yet some are in positions of power and we don’t even know it. They’re a Mafia, helping each other out. And this is something our readers might like to know.”
Maia wasn’t prepared to give in: “But things are changing, maybe in ten years a gay will be able to say he’s gay without anyone batting an eyelid.”
“All sorts of things can happen in ten years, we’re all aware that morals are declining. But for the moment this is a matter of concern to our readers. Lucidi, you’ve plenty of sources, give us something on queers in politics — but be careful, don’t name names, we don’t want to end up in court, we just want to float the idea, the specter, create a shiver, a sense of unease...”
“I can give you plenty of names if you wish,” said Lucidi. “But if, as you say, it’s just a matter of creating unease, according to what I’ve heard, there’s a bookshop in Rome where high-ranking homosexuals meet unnoticed, the place is mostly visited by normal people. And for some it’s also a place where they can get a bindle of cocaine. You pick up a book, take it to the counter, and the assistant will slip in the bindle along with the book. It’s well known that... well, mentioning no names, one was also a minister, and a homosexual, and he is given to snorting coke. Everyone knows, or anyone of any importance. It’s not a place for your garden-variety butt boy, nor the ballet dancer who’d camp around and attract too much attention.”
“It’s fine to talk about rumors, with a few spicy details, just a bit of color. But there’s also a way of introducing names. You can say that the place is totally respectable since it’s frequented by eminent personalities, and there you can throw in seven or eight names of writers, journalists, and senators of impeccable character. Except that among these names you include one or two queers. No one can say we are libeling anyone, because those names appear as examples of people of integrity. Indeed, we can include a card-carrying womanizer whose lover’s name we know. Meanwhile we’ve sent out a coded message for those ready to listen, and someone will have understood that we could say much more if we wanted.”
Maia was shocked. She left before the others, motioning to me as if to say, Sorry, I have to be alone tonight, I’m taking a sleeping pill and going straight to bed. And so I fell prey to Braggadocio, who continued regaling me with his stories as we strolled off and, by pure coincidence, ended up in Via Bagnera, as if the somber air of the place suited the morbid nature of his tale.
“So, listen, here I seem to be running up against a series of events that go against my theory, though you’ll see it’s not quite like that. Anyway, Mussolini, now reduced to offal, is stitched more or less back together, and buried with Claretta and the rest of them in the main Musocco cemetery, but in an unmarked tomb so no one could turn it into a place of Fascist pilgrimage. This must have been the wish of whoever had let the real Mussolini escape, to minimize talk of his death. They certainly couldn’t create the myth of Barbarossa hidden away in a cave, which might work well for Hitler since no one knew what had happened to his body or whether he had actually died. But while letting it be thought that Mussolini was dead (and partisans continued to celebrate Piazzale Loreto as one of the magical moments of the liberation), they had to be prepared for the idea that one day the deceased would resurface — as new, as good as new, as the song goes. And there’s no way of resurrecting anything from patched-up pulp. But at this point that spoilsport Domenico Leccisi appears on the scene.”
“He was the one who snatched the Duce’s corpse, wasn’t he?”
“Exactly. A twenty-six-year-old goon, the last firebrand of Salò, full of ideals but no ideas. He wants to give his idol a decent burial, or at least create a scandal to publicize the resurgence of neofascism, and he puts together a band of crazies like himself to go to the cemetery one night in April 1946. The few watchmen are fast asleep. He goes straight to the grave, obviously he has inside information. He digs up the body, now in a worse state than when it was boxed up — after all, a year had gone by, and I’ll let you picture what he must have found — and pitter-patter hush-hush he carries it away as best he can, leaving a scrap of decomposed tissue and even two bones lying along the cemetery path. I mean to say, what idiocy.”