‘Get lost,’ the thin one retorted, then turned round and, to make his meaning clearer, gave the little boy curled up on the ground another kick.
‘Right, we’ll see about this.’ He opened the door and got out.
War had been declared and Graziano Biglia could not but feel happy, because the day he couldn’t put two little ruffians like these in their place it would be time to have himself carried off to an old people’s home.
‘Let’s see about this, then.’
He swaggered over to them in his best orang-utan style and shoved Pierini, who fell on his backside. Then he smoothed back his hair. ‘Apologise, you little git.’
Pierini got to his feet fuming with rage and gave him a scowl so full of bile and scorn that Graziano was momentarily taken aback.
‘A right couple of heroes you are. Two of you agains…’ Our paladin didn’t manage to finish his sentence because he heard an ‘Aaaaah!’ behind him, and before he could turn round the oaf had grabbed him round the throat and was trying to throttle him. He squeezed tighter than a boa constrictor. Graziano tried to tear that alien off him, but couldn’t. He was strong. The thin one stood in front of him and without more ado punched him hard in the stomach.
Graziano blew out all the air he had in his lungs and started coughing and spluttering. An explosion of colours blurred his vision and he had to tense his legs to stop himself falling on the ground like a marionette whose strings have been cut.
What the hell was going on?
Children
Once, about seven years before this story, Graziano was in Rio de Janeiro on tour with the Radio Bengals, a world-music group he had been playing with for a few months. All five of them were in a van crammed with instruments, amplifiers and loudspeakers. It was nine o’clock in the evening and at ten they were due to play in a jazz club north of the city, but had got lost.
That cursed metropolis was bigger than Los Angeles and dirtier than Calcutta.
They struggled with the map but couldn’t figure it out. Where the hell were they?
They had driven off the bypass and entered an apparently uninhabited favela. Corrugated iron huts. Putrid smelly streams running down the middle of the churned-up road. Piles of burnt rubbish.
The classic shithole.
Boliwar Ram, the Indian flute-player, was quarrelling with Hassan Chemirani, the Iranian drummer, when a score of children emerged from the shacks. The youngest might have been nine years old, the oldest thirteen. They were half-naked and barefoot. Graziano had lowered the window to ask them how to get out of that place, but had immediately wound it up again.
They looked like a bunch of zombies.
Expressionless eyes staring into nothingness, gaunt faces, hollow cheeks, blue cracked lips as if they were eighty years old. Each had a rusty knife in one hand and in the other a half orange impregnated with some solvent or other. They kept holding them under their noses and sniffing. And all of them, in the same way, would close their eyes, seem on the point of falling on the ground, then recover and resume their slow advance.
‘Let’s get out of here. Right away. I don’t like the look of these guys,’ said Yvan Ledoux, the French keyboard player who was at the wheel. And he had begun a difficult manoeuvre to reverse the van.
Meanwhile the children kept slowly advancing.
‘Quick! Quick!’ Graziano urged him, in a panic.
‘I can’t, damn it!’ shouted the keyboardist. Three of the kids had got in front of the van and were clinging on to the windscreen wipers and the radiator grill. ‘Can’t you see? If I go forward I’ll run them over.’
‘Go backwards, then.’
Yvan checked the rear-view mirror. ‘They’re behind as well. I don’t know what to do.’
Roselyne Gasparian, the Armenian singer, a petite girl with a shock of coloured curls, started screaming and clutched hold of Graziano.
The boys outside banged their hands rhythmically on the bodywork and windows and for the people inside it was like being inside a drum.
The Radio Bengals screamed in terror.
The window on the driver’s side shattered. An enormous rock and millions of tiny transparent cubes showered on the Frenchman, cutting his face, and a dozen little arms thrust in, grabbing him. Yvan shrieked like a madman, struggling to break free. Graziano tried to hit those tentacles with the stand of a microphone, but as soon as one withdrew another popped in, and one, longer than the rest, took the keys.
The engine stopped.
And they vanished.
They weren’t there any more. In front, or behind. Anywhere.
The musicians huddled together, expecting something.
The famous multiethnic fusion that they had sought so hard to achieve during gigs without ever attaining it completely was now more present than ever.
Then there was a metallic creak.
The handle of the big side door went down. The door began to slide slowly along its runner. And as the gap widened they could see the skinny bodies of children bathed in white by the full moon and dark eyes determined to get what they wanted. When the door was fully open, they found themselves facing a group of boys with knives in their hands looking at them in silence. One of the smallest, he can’t have been older than nine or ten, and one of his eye-sockets was hollow and black, motioned to them to get out. The stuff he sniffed had dried him up like an Egyptian mummy.
The musicians emerged with their hands up. Graziano helped Yvan, who was dabbing his eyebrow with the hem of his T-shirt.
And the Radio Bengals walked off into the Brazilian night without looking back.
The police, next day, said they had been lucky.
115
But Graziano was not in Rio de Janeiro now.
I’m in Ischiano Scalo, for God’s sake.
A village of respectable, God-fearing people. Where the kids went to school and played soccer in Piazza XXV Aprile. At least that’s what he’d thought until that moment.
Seeing the evil eyes of that small boy closing in to hit him again, he wasn’t so sure.
‘But now that’s it, I’ve had enough.’ He raised his leg and caught him with the heel of his boot just under the breastbone. The little thug was lifted in the air and, stiff as a Big Jim, hurled backwards onto the wet grass. He lay there for a moment with his mouth open, paralysed, but then turned over abruptly, struggled to his knees, hands on his stomach, and spewed out some red stuff.
Oh my God! It’s blood! He’s haemorrhaging! thought Graziano, worried and at the same time elated by his own lethal power. Who am I? Who am I? All I gave him was a gentle kick in the midriff.
Fortunately, what the skinny one was throwing up was not blood but tomato sauce. There were also some pieces of semi digested pizza. The young man, before coming out to throw his weight around, had eaten some red pizza.
‘He’ll kill you! He’ll kill you!’ the oaf was yelling into his right tympanum. He was clinging to his back and trying at the same time to choke him and wrestle him to the ground.
His breath smelled disgusting. Onions and fish.
This one must have had a big slice of pizza with onions and anchovies.
It was that asphyxiating blast that gave him the strength to shake him off. Graziano bent forward, grabbed him by the hair and hauled him over his head like a heavy rucksack. The big lout did a somersault in the air and found himself lying flat on the ground. Graziano didn’t give him time to move. He gave him a kick in the ribs. ‘There. See how you like it.’ The oaf started screaming. ‘Not nice, is it? Now get out of here, the pair of you.’
Like the cat and the fox in Pinocchio after they get beaten by the Fire Eater, they got to their feet and, tails between their legs, limped over to the Ciao.
The oaf started up the engine and the skinny one got on behind him, but before they left he threatened Graziano. ‘You’d better watch out. Don’t get any big ideas. You’re nobody.’ Then he turned to the small boy, who had got to his feet. ‘And I haven’t finished
with you yet. You were lucky today, you won’t be next time.’
116
He had appeared out of nowhere.
Like the good guy in a western or the Man from the East or, even better, Mad Max.
The car door had opened and the avenger had stepped out, dressed in black with sunglasses, a coat that flapped in the wind and a red silk shirt. And he’d kicked their butts.
A couple of karate moves and Pierini and Flame were flattened.
Pietro knew who he was. Big Biglia. The one who’d gone out with a famous actress and appeared on the Maurizio Costanzo Show.
He was probably on his way back from the Maurizio Costanzo Show now, and stopped to save me.
He limped over to his hero, who was standing on the grass trying to clean his muddy boots with his hand.
‘Thank you, sir.’ Pietro held out his hand.
‘You’re welcome. I just got my boots a bit dirty,’ said Biglia, shaking it. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘A bit. But I’d already hurt myself when I fell off my bike.’
In fact the side of his body where they had been kicking him was very sore and he had a feeling it was going to get worse over the coming hours.
‘Why were they beating you up?’
Pietro pursed his lips and tried to find an answer that would impress his saviour. But he couldn’t think of one and was forced to admit: ‘I sneaked.’
‘You sneaked?’
‘Yes, at school. But the deputy headmistress forced me to – if I hadn’t she would have failed me. I know it was wrong, but I didn’t want to do it.’
‘I understand.’ Biglia checked if his coat was dirty.
Actually he didn’t seem to understand much or to be very interested in learning more. Pietro was relieved. It was a long and nasty story.
Graziano squatted down, bringing himself down to his level. ‘Listen to me. Guys like that only mean trouble. If you do a bit of travelling round the world one day, as I have, you’ll meet others of the same type, and much nastier than those bastards. Keep away from them, because they either want to harm you or they want to make you like them. And you’re worth a thousand of them, that’s what you must always tell yourself. And above all, if somebody hits you, you mustn’t drop on the ground like a sack of potatoes, because that only makes things worse. And it’s not manly. You must stay on your feet and face them.’ He put his hands on his shoulders. ‘You must look them in the eye. And even if you’re scared shitless, remember that they are too, it’s just that they’re better at hiding it. If you’re sure of yourself, they can’t harm you. And another thing, you’re too thin, don’t you eat enough?’
Pietro shook his head.
‘Get the first law into your head and obey it: treat your body like a temple. Do you understand?’
Pietro nodded.
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you get home?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want me to give you a lift? Your bike’s broken …’
‘No, don’t worry … Thanks. I can manage. Thanks again …’
Graziano gave him an affectionate pat on the back. ‘Off you go, then.’
Pietro went over to his bike. He hoisted it on his back and set off.
He had been saved by Big Biglia. He hadn’t entirely understood all that stuff about the body and the temple, but it didn’t matter because when he grew up he wanted to be just like him. A guy who never makes mistakes, who looks the bad guys in the eye and wipes the floor with them. If he did become like Biglia, he too would help the weakest children.
Because that’s what heroes are for.
117
Graziano watched the little boy walk away carrying his bicycle on his back. I didn’t even ask him what his name was …
The gust of good humour that had billowed out his soul like a sail had dropped, leaving him sad and fed up. He felt terribly depressed.
It had been the boy’s eyes that had changed his mood. Resignation, that’s what he’d seen in them. And if there was one thing Graziano Biglia detested with every fibre of his being it was resignation.
He was like an old man. An old man who has realised that there’s nothing more to be done, the war is lost and all his efforts won’t change anything. How can he be like that? He has his whole life in front of him.
William Tell or someone else had said that everyone is the maker of their own destiny.
And for Graziano Biglia this, too, was a truth.
I did it, when the time came … I gave up the loser’s life I was living, I told Mama I’d had enough of her sautéed kidneys and I travelled the world and met the most amazing people, Tibetan monks, Australian surfers, Jamaican rastas. I ate yak’s milk and butter, roast opossum and hard-boiled platypus-eggs and I can tell you, Mama dear, they’re a thousand times better than your sautéed kidneys with parsley and garlic. The only reason I don’t tell you this is that I don’t want to hurt you. And I’m in Ischiano because I want to be here. Because I need to strengthen my ties to my own land. No one forced me to come back. And if that little boy were my son, he would never have let those two thugs push him around, because I would have taught him to defend himself, I would have helped him to grow up, I would have given him … I …
From the unfathomable depths of his consciousness there arose an obscure entity, an atavistic feeling of guilt linked to our gregarious existence, which lay there, apparently placid, but ready, in favourable conditions (financial straits, girlfriend problems, crises of confidence in his own abilities, and so on) to raise its head and obliterate at a stroke all the New Age truths, Tibetan axioms, faith in the regenerative power of flamenco, William Tell, crossbows and colts, by asking one simple question.
But what have you actually achieved in your life?
And, painful though it is to admit it, there were no positive answers.
Graziano walked slowly towards his car, with his head bowed, carrying an anvil on his shoulders.
Undoubtedly he’d done a lot of things in his life. But he’d done them because he’d been bitten by the tarantula at birth, he’d come into this world afflicted with St Vitus’s dance, with a never-passing restlessness that drove him to wander about in search of an obscure, unattainable happiness.
There was no plan.
There was no ultimate aim.
He opened the car door. He got in. He turned off the stereo, silencing the guitars of the Gipsy Kings.
The truth was that for forty-four years he had stuffed his brain with garbage. With beautiful films. With he-man commercials for Taverna bitters. Fantasies where he was the Tuareg and Erica Trettel the Spanish filly to be tamed in a Tunisian oasis.
Me settled, responsible, with a nice little wife, horses, a jeans shop, children. Who am I kidding? I’m just playing at happy families. I can pull three hundred woman in one summer but I can’t build a permanent relationship with anyone. I’m no good.
I’m as lonely as a dog.
A diffuse pain gripped him by the stomach and made him open his mouth and utter a laboured sigh. He felt weak and limp and penniless and thriftless. In short, a failure.
(What would Flora want with a guy like you?)
Nothing.
Fortunately, these pessimistico-existential considerations passed through him like neutrinos, those elementary entities devoid of weight or energy which flash through the created world at the speed of light, leaving it unchanged.
Graziano Biglia, as we have already seen, was constitutionally immune to depression. And these moments of lucid vision were sporadic and fleeting and so, reverting to his habitual state of being as blind as a bat, he was able to try and try and try again. For he was sure that sooner or later he too would find some goddam peace of mind.
He turned round and took his guitar off the back seat, picked out a gentle little tune and finally started singing. ‘You’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see, things will change, maybe not tomorrow but one day they will change. You?
??ll see, you’ll see, this is not the end for me. I don’t know how or when, but things are gonna change, you’ll see.’
118
Gloria Celani was in bed.
And she was watching The Silence of the Lambs, her favourite film, on her little TV. Beside her was a tray with her breakfast. A half-eaten croissant. A napkin soaked in spilt caffè latte.
Her parents had gone to the Boat Show in Pescara and wouldn’t be back till tomorrow. So she was alone in the house, except for Francesco, the old gardener.
When Pietro entered, he found her cowering in the corner with the bedclothes pulled up to her eyes.
‘Oh God, it’s so scary. I can’t bear to watch. Come and sit here.’ She patted the mattress. ‘You’ve taken your time. I thought you’d never get here …’
How many times has she seen it? Pietro wondered gloomily. At least a hundred, and she still gets just as terrified as she did the first time.
He took off his windproof jacket and put it on a small armchair decorated with a bright yellow-and-blue-striped material, which also covered the walls of the room.
The bedroom was the creation of a well-known Roman interior designer (as were all the other rooms and, joy of joys, the villa had been featured in AD and Mrs Celani had almost fainted away) and was like a kitschy little bonbonnière with those pale pink cupboards with green pommels, those curtains with pictures of cows all over them and that Wedgwood-blue carpet.
Gloria loathed it. If she’d had her way, she would have set it on fire. Pietro, more tolerant as usual, didn’t think it was all that bad. True, those curtains weren’t great, but he didn’t at all dislike the carpet, which was soft and thick, like the fur of a raccoon.
He sat down on the bed, taking care not to put his weight on his wound.
Gloria, though glued to the television, saw him grimace out of the corner of her eye. ‘What’s the matter?’