“I’ll be in touch with you. For now, have a good evening.”
“And good evening to you, Signore…”
I flashed him another smile.
“Everyone calls me Bravo. Why don’t you do the same?”
He turned and went back into the apartment. As I headed downstairs, I heard a woman’s voice from inside.
“Remo, who was that?”
The door swung shut before I could hear the answer. I found myself back in the street, inhaling the air of a warm spring evening, the kind that puts you at peace with the world. I went back to my car, feeling what the television news anchors describe as cautiously optimistic. Driving at a leisurely pace, I made it into the Brera neighborhood where, for an aperitif, I was forced to drive around looking for a place to park until I’d worked up an appetite. At last, I made it to a restaurant that I frequented, both for pleasure and for public relations. The Torre Pendente, in that period, was a very popular little place, where the Milan that goes out at night meets to begin the evening. The Milan that goes to Courmayeur, Santa Margherita, Portofino, and so on, with a long list of etceteras. All of them expensive little etceteras. People from the world of fashion, businesspeople, night owls, shitheads. All jumbled together in a way that makes it hard to tell which category any particular individual fits into. Here I saw a couple of girls I work with, one of them out for dinner with a date I had set her up with. I saw a couple of others I’d like to work with. I greeted friends, male and female, many of whom were faces with absolutely no names for me. I made one phone call to further Barbara’s economic interests and another to lay out the rest of the operation I was getting under way with Remo Frontini.
Finally I ate dinner, just trying to kill time until my appointment with Laura.
And now I’m here, crushing my cigarette with the heel of my shoe and locking my miserable little loser car. Aside from the occasional concession to the importance of façade, that is to say personal grooming and apparel suitable for appearing in certain social circles, my life is usually lived behind the scenes. Milan is a city that by night offers many hiding places in spite of the neon, the bright lights, and the blinking signs. The more light there is, the more shadow becomes available. And I’ve always been particularly good at moving in those shadows.
I’m outside the front door of the Ascot Club and I’m about to take the stairs when a Ferrari 308 GTB, so red it could piss off a bull and an army of wage slaves, pulls up alongside me. The man behind the wheel gestures to me with one hand. I walk over and he leans across to push open the passenger door. I get in, sit down, and seal our conversation behind the thump of a panel of elegantly shaped metal.
“Ciao, Bravo.”
“Hey, Micky. How’s it hanging?”
“Sometimes to the right, other times to the left. As usual.”
I take in the handsome blond young man dressed in Armani sitting in the driver’s seat. Micky is about thirty and he’s at the top of his game. He leads a pretty good life, spending time with the kind of women who are willing to pay for his expensive bad habits and the kind of people who allow him to set aside a little something for the future, without putting too fine a point on the various whys and for whoms. He was on the other end of one of the two phone calls I made from the restaurant.
By the orange glow of the streetlights, he looks even blonder and more tan. He comes right to the point, and I swerve to accommodate.
“What can I do for you?”
“I need to talk to Tano Casale.”
Among Micky’s many jobs, he drums up business for the gambling dens that the mob boss sets up and moves around with great cunning, popping up here and there around the city and the greater metropolitan area. Micky looks out at the street and a couple who are just slipping into the Ascot. He waits until they have disappeared from sight, as if they might have overheard what he was about to say.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Why?”
“I have an opportunity that might interest him.”
He turns wary.
“Bravo, this had better not be bullshit.”
“Oh, it’s not. Take my word for it. You’ll see: he’ll be grateful that you and I both thought of him.”
He thinks for a minute. Then he decides that I’m trustworthy and gives me this one chance.
“All right. But I have to make a phone call first.”
I nod.
“Of course.”
Micky looks at his watch, which is obviously gold and authentic. And I have to guess that, unlike Daytona, he has more than one.
“I’ll meet you out here in an hour. If you don’t see me, it means I can’t arrange it for tonight. In that case, I’ll let you know when it’s possible.”
“Roger. May the Force be with you.”
I get out of the car and start toward the entrance of the club. The roar of the Ferrari’s eight cylinders accompanies me part of the way as the car screeches away, leaving ten thousand lire worth of rubber on the asphalt and the sound of the money spent reverberating in the air.
I start down the stairs, and after a fairly short number of steps I’m in a cellar that has covered itself with glory by producing nearly all the big names in popular cabaret entertainment in northern Italy. Just past the entrance there’s a little salon, bounded on the left by the coat check, with cheap wall-to-wall carpeting, sofas, and lights, an area dedicated to killing time, where the usual clientele gathers to drink and smoke. In spite of the purposely drab aesthetics and a sense of institutional shabbiness, there’s a certain dose of magic in the air, a feeling of potential success, real success, the kind that can change your life without warning. It’s no secret that television and film producers in search of new talent come here first. For many, working at the Ascot will be the end of the road, but for a few others it’s only the beginning. Afterward, it becomes a difficult bond to break. There are evenings when the club becomes such a gathering place for famous comedians and hit singers, aside from the young actors and comics on the playbill, that if a bomb went off in that musty cellar, it would take out half the theater people in our laughable country.
This is one of those evenings. The little room at the bottom of the stairs is full. The reputation of the Silly Dilly M. has attracted a big crowd, including a number of well-known show business professionals, here to satisfy their curiosity and to win the right to criticize after the show.
There’s a line outside the cloakroom. The couple I saw coming in earlier is lingering to admire the posters tacked to the walls. Maybe they’re here from outside of Milan and they’re a little dazzled to be breathing the same oxygen as celebrities they’ve seen on television.
I say hello to a few people, I let others say hello to me, and in the meantime I let my gaze roam the room until I spot her. Laura’s sitting on a couch, talking with a young man. If the experience with Tulip undermined her morale, it did nothing to dim her beauty. She looks like a young girl. She’s dressed in relaxed clothing, with a pair of jeans and a white blouse under a casual jacket made of dark blue canvas that doesn’t concede much to the fashion of the Year of Our Lord 1978. Her hair is mahogany brown, pulled back in a ponytail, and her candid, open face looks out on the world through a pair of eyes so intensely blue that they’d make a cornflower jealous.
That’s what I’d say if I were a man who was in love with her. But all I am is a man who sells her, and so my words, because of the way things are, are of a different nature.
The man who’s talking with her is Giorgio Fieschi, a cabaret artist who’s been appearing at the Ascot since the start of the season. He’s a dark young man with a clean face, and he’s almost as naïve as he is talented. He showed up, new in town, asking to audition, and that very same evening he was the star of a stunning debut performance. Bonverde, who is sharp-eyed and farsighted, hired him on the spot. The audience took to him immediately. The veterans of the Ascot, all from Milan, welcomed him with a certain arrogance and from the very
first day targeted him with a veiled ostracism. I can’t say whether he’s realized it yet, but when he finally does I hope he understands that their attitude is dictated by fear of his talent, not any actual superiority. I hope he figures it out soon. Unfortunately, the climb to the top demands a thick skin and a grim determination that this overgrown boy doesn’t have yet.
I draw closer and find that there’s a certain look in Laura’s eyes and the same look in his. I know all too well the way sex leaps from eye to eye to fail to see that this is something very different. I know that what I have in front of me is not just male and female, but a man and a woman. And it seems to me that I can hear the sound of violins in the background, along with a faint stench of trouble.
I grab a chair right across from them, certain that I’m interrupting something.
“Hey, lovely people, how’s it going?”
The two of them don’t answer quickly enough. Piero, a waiter with a very professional manner, materializes suddenly beside the table and warns Giorgio that he’s on in just a few minutes. The first half of the evening’s show will consist of the acts of a few of the young artists in the Ascot’s usual repertory, while the second half of the show will feature the evening’s star attraction, the British mimes.
The budding cabaret star smiles. The smile spreads all the way into his eyes. I believe that what the rest of the world considers to be work, he looks upon as pure unadulterated fun.
“Okay, it’s time. See you afterward, Laura?”
“Sure, I’ll be in the club, watching your show.”
Knowing that she’ll be in the crowd tonight seems to give him pleasure. To judge from appearances, a great deal of pleasure.
“Good. I’m trying out a new skit tonight.”
The young man stands up and walks briskly away and up a few steps, vanishing through a door on the left that leads to the backstage area and the control booth.
Laura and I are left alone together. I try to catch her eye, but she’s not eager to meet my gaze. The sound of violins has died away; all that remains in the air is the smell of trouble. She stands up, smoothing the wrinkles out of her jacket. It strikes me that her concern about her dire situation has softened considerably. I don’t know to what extent I should attribute that to my reassurances earlier that afternoon and to what extent it’s due to the man she just met this evening.
She beats me to the punch.
“Do you mind if we talk later? I want to see that guy’s show. I’ve heard he’s really good.”
“Sure, I’ll come with you.”
We get to our feet and follow the same path that Giorgio took just a few minutes earlier. Only where he went backstage, we continue straight, passing by the bar where two other cabaret artists on the bill this week sit drinking. Bonverde is standing next to the bar, in the throes of his distinctive personal style of gesticulation, chatting with a famous tennis player who spends a lot of time at the club whenever he’s in Milan.
At the end of a short hallway is the door that leads into the cramped and crowded little theater. We pass through that door and find ourselves in the dim half-light, standing against the wall just to the left of the door. To our right is the mini-amphitheater, packed with people. The fact that they scheduled Giorgio Fieschi for tonight must mean that he’s making a name for himself in the world of Milanese comedy.
As if these thoughts of mine had summoned him from behind the scenes, Giorgio appears from behind the black drapery that serves as both backdrop and curtain and makes his entrance onstage. There’s virtually no applause but you can detect a quickening sense of expectation. He starts the show by tossing off a few good offhand wisecracks about current events, the way they all do to break the ice. He follows that with fifteen minutes or so of excellent stock material that I’ve heard before, and the audience really starts warming up. Then he begins talking about himself, saying that he was born into a big family, that he had a lot of brothers, and that he hasn’t had an easy life. At this point, I expect one of those routines that churns out a tragicomic elegy to poverty. Instead he surprises me and everyone in the audience, by suddenly changing his voice and mouthing the subdued and emphatic tones of a child.
… Oh yes, I come from a really big family. I remember in the mornings we always woke up at dawn and as soon as we were awake we said good morning all around, we’d say: buon giorno, Aldo, buon giorno, Glauco, buon giorno, Ugo, buon giorno, Silvio, buon giorno, Sergio, buon giorno, Giorgio, buon giorno, Amilcare, buon giorno, Gaspare, buon giorno, Anselmo, buon giorno, Massimo …
With each greeting and name Giorgio swivels his head, changes voice, intonation, and facial expression. The audience has the impression that on the stage before them, they really are seeing all those people interacting. After a pause he turns to the audience.
Around eleven thirty, we’d go out to begin the hard work of tilling the fields. At noon our mama would call us for the simple good food of our midday meal and we’d sit down around the table thanking the good Lord for that day’s gifts and then buon appetito, Aldo, buon appetito, Glauco, buon appetito, Ugo, buon appetito, Silvio, buon appetito, Sergio, buon appetito, Giorgio, buon appetito, Amilcare, buon appetito, Gaspare, buon appetito, Anselmo, buon appetito, Massimo …
He offers the spectators a gesture of resignation and then, in a slightly more adult voice:
I’ve never tasted a spoonful of hot soup in my life!
Then he returns to the world of his character.
And then, when evening came, weary but happy, we’d go to bed after brushing our teeth and, before falling asleep …
By now the audience knows what’s coming and starts repeating along with him:
… buona notte, Aldo, buona notte, Glauco, buona notte, Ugo, buona notte, Silvio, buona notte, Sergio, buona notte, Giorgio, buona notte, Amilcare, buona notte, Gaspare, buona notte, Anselmo, buona notte, Massimo … And then we’d close our eyes and fall into a peaceful sleep …
Another pause for effect.
… around four in the morning.
Someone slips involuntarily into the kind of laughter that you simply can’t stop, the kind that has the power to spread to everyone else in the room, the kind that only talent—true talent—can trigger. Giorgio continues.
One Sunday morning, the day on which we gave thanks for our good lives, we were in the courtyard of our farmhouse, and we were playing soccer, passing the ball from one to another and saying grazie, Aldo, grazie, Glauco, grazie, Ugo, grazie, Silvio, grazie, Sergio, grazie, Giorgio, grazie, Amilcare, grazie, Gaspare, grazie, Anselmo, grazie, Massimo …
He breaks off and appears to look into the distance on his right.
At a certain point we saw someone come slowly down the hill, heading in our direction. As he drew closer we realized that he was the midwife’s husband, a man who knows us all perfectly well because he practically watched us come into the world. So we lined up, along the fenceposts, thinking that when he passed by he’d greet us one by one, by our names. But instead, when he came even with us, he smiled, waved his hand, and called out “Hi, everybody” and continued on his way …
Giorgio pauses again, looking around with an expression of baffled bewilderment. Then he speaks in a forlorn voice.
… having ruined our childhood.
The audience sits in silence for a moment before it clicks. Then comes the wave of applause, warm with empathy and tenderness, prompted by his surreal sense of humor and the sheer virtuosity of his monologue. Seated next to me in the dark, Laura claps, her eyes glistening, tears of laughter sliding down her cheeks. Giorgio Fieschi must be one good perfomer if he can make someone forget about the existence of a creature like Tulip.
I look at my watch. In just a few minutes I have an appointment to meet Micky, outside in the street. I drag Laura out of the theater. I want her to be able to see me and hear me clearly. As we close the door behind us, surging applause still echoes in the air.
I move Laura back against the wall. I speak to her in an und
ertone but emphatically. I’m no actor, but I can play my part when it’s necessary.
“Listen to me. I do something for you, you do something for me. I have a meeting in just a little while that should solve your problem once and for all. And you have an appointment tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, at the Hotel Gallia, room 605, with a very refined and courteous gentleman who, if you’re willing, wants nothing better than to hand you a million lire.”
Laura looks at me. I look back at her and there are no violins in the air, just the rumbling of thunder.
“Tell me that you understand and that the answer is yes.”
She makes the tiniest movement of her head, as if to nod yes.
“Should I consider that to be the yes I’m looking for?”
At last, Laura accepts that she is what she always has been.
“I understand. Hotel Gallia, room 605, at nine o’clock.”
“Excellent.”
I relax. I smile at her and authorize a distraction, one that I would guess she was planning to enjoy in any case.
“Have all the fun you want fucking your little cabaret artist, but tomorrow morning you have to give that gentleman the time of his life.”
I leave her waiting, alone, though I feel sure that she won’t be alone for long. I climb back upstairs to the street, slithering out without a word to anyone. Actually, I’m fifteen minutes early, but I was dying for a cigarette to make up for the sense of envy that other people’s talent and success have always aroused in me. I wait under the glow of the streetlights, studied with some curiosity by a pair of hookers competing for the few passing cars. Then, from around the corner of Via Silva, preceded by the grumbling of the engine, Micky’s Ferrari emerges. As before, he pulls up next to me and waves for me to get in. I open the door and take a seat on the cream Connolly leather upholstery.
“So, are we going?”
He confirms with his voice and his head.
“Yes.”
He takes off while I’m still pulling the door shut. Instinctively I wonder whether this is the last ride I’ll take in any car as I set off for an appointment with a businessman said to have been responsible for a series of unmarked graves scattered through the vast amount of cement that’s been poured in this city.