Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

And if I had done things differently? If I had chosen the straight line of art? The life of a writer whom some would define as pure, for example, with his bad moods, his psychoses, his normalcy. One who tells inspiring stories. Who’s all engaged in style and narrative technique. I didn’t know how to do that. Mine is the life of a fugitive, a story runner, a multiplier of tales. I am a monster, as is anyone who sacrifices himself for something he believed to be superior. But I still have some respect. Respect for those who read. For those who snatch important time from their lives so as to construct a new one. Nothing is more powerful than reading; no one is a greater liar than he who holds that reading a book is a passive gesture. To read, hear, study, understand — these are the only ways to construct life beyond life, life alongside of life. Reading is a dangerous act, because it gives shape and dimension to words, it incarnates and disperses them in all directions. It turns everything upside down and makes change and tickets and lint fall out of the pockets of the world. To get to know narco-trafficking, to get to know the connection between the rationality of evil and money, to rip open the veil that obscures the supposed familiarity with the world. To know is the first step toward change. My respect goes to those people who don’t throw these stories away, who don’t neglect them, but who make them their own. Those who feel the words on their skin, who carve them in their flesh, who build a new vocabulary — they are altering the direction of the world, because they have understood how to be in it. It’s like breaking one’s chains. Words are action, connection tissue. Only those who are familiar with these stories can defend themselves from them. Only those who tell them to their child, a friend, their husband, only those who carry them into public places, into living rooms and classrooms are articulating the possibility to resist. Being alone in the abyss is like being in a cage, but if lots of people decide to face the abyss, then the bars of that prison cell will melt. And a cell without bars is no longer a prison.

In the Book of Revelation Saint John writes, “And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.” I believe that readers need to do this with words. Put them in their mouths, chew them, grind them up, and swallow them, so that the chemistry they are made of can work inside of us, can illuminate the dark night and draw a line between happiness and pain.

You feel empty when your words seem to be enhanced by the threats they provoke, as if people are suddenly listening to every word you utter merely because they risk getting you killed. This is what happens: It happens that silence on these topics doesn’t exist. There is a buzz: news flashes, trials, a narco is arrested. Everything becomes physiological. And when everything becomes physiological, no one notices it anymore. And this is how someone writes: He dies writing; he is threatened writing; he stumbles writing. When the threat comes it seems that a part of the world notices what has been written, at least for a while. But then it forgets. The truth is that there’s no alternative. Cocaine is a carburant. Cocaine is a devastating, terrible, deadly energy. There never seem to be enough arrests. Policies to fight it always seem to miss the mark. As terrible as it may seem, total legalization may be the only answer. A horrendous response, horrible perhaps, agonizing. But the only one that can stop everything. That can halt the inflated earnings. That can put an end to the war. Or, at least, it’s the only response that comes to mind when in the end you ask yourself, now what?

I have let myself be overwhelmed by voices every day for years. Voices that shout at the top of their lungs that alcohol is the substance that claims the most victims. Sharp, hammering voices that every now and then are silenced by other voices that boldly claim that yes, of course, alcohol is bad, but only if you abuse it, if that mug of beer on a Saturday night becomes a habit, and that there’s a big difference between alcohol and cocaine. Then the chorus chimes in, those who think that legalization is the lesser evil; all things considered, the voices suggest, legalized cocaine would come under the control of doctors. And so let’s legalize murder then! a portentous, baritone voice replies, momentarily silencing everyone. But the silence doesn’t last long, because then come those cawing reactions — like knife stabs — one after the other, of those who maintain that drug users really only harm themselves, that if you outlaw cocaine then you have to outlaw tobacco too, and that if you say yes, then the state is a pusher state, a criminal state. And what about weapons then? Aren’t they worse? At which point yet another voice — that calm voice with a know-it-all tone that gets stuck on consonants — affirms that weapons are necessary for self-defense, tobacco can be used in moderation, and… But in the end it’s an ethical problem, and who are we to curb a individual choice with rules and decrees?

At this point the voices start to overlap and get all muddled. The confusion of voices always ends up this way. In silence. And I have to start all over again. But I’m convinced that legalization really could be the answer. Because it hits where cocaine finds its fertile terrain, at the law of supply and demand. If the requests were to dry up, everything above them would shrivel, like a flower without water. Is it a gamble? A fantasy? The ravings of a monster? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s another fragment of the abyss that few have the courage to face.

For me the word “narco-capitalism” has become a ball of cud that continues to swell. I can’t swallow it; every time I try it goes down the wrong way, and I risk choking to death. All the words I chew on stick to that cud, and the blob expands, like a tumor. I’d like to swallow it down so that it can be attacked by gastric acid. I would like to melt down this word and grab the heart of it. But I can’t. Besides, it’s pointless, because I already know I would find a grain of white powder. Of cocaine. Regardless of the policies and seizures the demand for cocaine will always be huge: The faster the world moves, the more there’s cocaine; the less time there is for stable relationships, for authentic exchanges, the more there’s coke.

I calm down; I have to calm down. I lie down and stare at the ceiling. I’ve collected quite a few ceilings over the years. From those so close to your nose that you can touch them if you stretch out your neck, to those so high up you have to squint to see if they’re frescos or humidity stains you’re looking at. I stare at the ceiling and imagine the entire globe. The world is a round ball of dough that is rising. It’s rising because of petroleum. It’s rising because of coltan. It’s rising because of gas. It’s rising because of the web. If you removed all these ingredients, the dough would risk falling, collapsing. But there’s one ingredient that works faster than all the others and that everyone wants. Cocaine. That plant that connects South America and Italy. Like an elastic band across the Atlantic, an elastic that can stretch infinitely without ever breaking. The roots there, the leaves here. Coke is the ingredient without which there could be no dough. Just as with flour, which in Italy and in South America is categorized by zeros, depending on its purity: The more zeros, the purer it is.

Zeros like wounds through which to see the world. Zeros like abysses you could sink into.

Zero, like the lens of the telescope through which you can observe the mirage of white gold, the best cocaine: 000.