Wu Ming - 54

Vittorio Capponi looked at his son. What he was looking for was a lesson, a lesson in life from a man half his age, whom he had abandoned one day to follow his fighting nature. At that moment he would have accepted anything at all, all the hatred in the world. He was ready, perhaps he had been for ten years.

Pierre screwed up his face, he made an effort, but understood that he would have to let the words flow.

‘And yet parents, before they are parents, are individuals. That’s what I think, I’ve taken a great deal of time to think about it. Perhaps I came here specifically to tell you that. For many years I wished I had a father like everyone else. A father who would have helped us, who would even have risked jail to take care of us. But the truth is that if you had made that choice, you wouldn’t have been you. You would have given up what you considered the right thing to do. And that would have made you a failure. A failure as a person, I mean. By making the choice you made, you failed as a father, but you followed your ideas, your feelings. So you taught us that living means believing in justice and building your own destiny, not having it imposed upon you by other people. And for that reason, in spite of everything, you’re a better person than many of the people I see in the bar, who have a house, a moped, L’Unità in their pocket, they have time to chat with their friends, and they don’t want to make any choices any more. Perhaps their children are graduates and postgraduates now, perhaps they have good jobs, but they will never know what I know.’

Two tears hung from his eyelashes. They stayed there, poised, they didn’t fall and they didn’t dry up. His father remained motionless; perhaps he had the same lump in his throat.

Pierre went on: ‘There, that’s what I came to tell you. That what has happened cannot be erased, but it’s too late to hate you and it’s too late for you to go on feeling guilty. It doesn’t do anyone any good.’

He gritted his teeth. Pierre hated sentimentality, he could only be sentimental with women, not among men, not between father and son.

He got to his feet, picked up his case and opened the front door. Radko slipped out, hungry for the morning air.

On the threshold the two men considered one another for a moment, embarrassed by the intimacy of their words.

‘You’ve said some important things, Robespierre.’

‘I’ve spoken the truth, dad.’

Vittiorio produced two envelopes from his shirt pocket and handed them to his son.

‘One letter for Nicola and one for Iolanda. I find it very hard to write in Italian, but I think they’ll manage to read it anyway. Talk to your brother and tell him I love him.’

Pierre nodded and didn’t say anything else.

They shook hands like old friends.

‘Good luck.’

‘You too.’

Finally they hugged.

When he had reached the top of the hill overlooking the house, his father’s whistle fetched back Radko, who had escorted him to that point.

Pierre turned around and saw him standing in the doorway, the old communist partisan exhausted by life. What he felt was not compassion. It would not have been fair; Vittorio had made his own choice and had not regretted it. He knew he had not said everything there was to be said, that he had held some things back, and for a moment his instinct told him to run back down there as well.

You’ve passed on your illness to me. I’ve made false papers to come here. Even I can’t accept the destiny they want to impose on me. I’ve got a job, a talent for dancing, a lover and no prospects. I can go on being a barman, dancing myself breathless, meeting my girlfriend in secret, while she still wants to do that. Is that all? Is there nothing else? Is that supposed to be enough for me? No, dad, it’s not enough, there’s got to be something else, perhaps somewhere else, perhaps in another world, just as there was for you. Perhaps that’s also why I’ve never managed to hate you. Because I’m like you too. I need more than the conversations in the bar.

He gripped the handle of the case, raised his arm in a farewell gesture and set off up the path.

Chapter 54

Bologna, 1 May, workers’ festival

The old man’s spit hit the eye of far-right MP Giorgio Almirante. A metre further on, meanwhile, a monstrous gash rent the face of his twin.

‘That takes nerve,’ Garibaldi cursed as he cleared his throat and prepared new ammunition. ‘A fascist like that, coming here to speak to us, in Bologna, on the 1st of May. What does he think he’s doing?’

‘It’s like this,’ the other man agreed. ‘It’s all very well saying that we’re against the atom bomb and all things like that, but if they give one to me, a nice bomb, and they tell me me to fire it on Washington, the Americans would be scared shitless, the wankers, and stop telling us what to do, you can be sure I’d press that button, I don’t care about women and children, I’d press it and there’s an end to it, because if you have to choose between two misfortunes you have to choose the less severe.’

‘Let’s just drop it, shall we, let’s not say another word about it, we’re late already.’

‘Yeah, you’re quite right, that’s quite enough: last time the doctor told me terrible things about my liver, and I’m not to excite myself.’

‘You never told me you had liver problems!’ Garibaldi said in surprise. ‘Do you want me to give you a little piece of Chinese mushroom?’

‘Do I hell.’ Bottone’s face screwed up as though someone had held some shit under his nose. ‘I don’t even want to see that filth.’

‘But it’s good for you, you know? It won’t make you sick or anything. You put it in your tea, and it turns into a broth, you drink three cups a day and you’ll be right as rain.’

‘I think it’s all nonsense, that’s what I think. One of those medicines that are good for everything and nothing.’

‘But if the Chinese drink them, they must have a reason, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, the Chinese!’ Bottone muttered after spitting at his umpteenth Almirante poster. ‘They’re strange people, the things that do them good don’t do us good. And listen, if that muck there comes from China then I born Vatican City, Shanghai Plovince, you not know that, honoulable Itarian comlade ?’

Bottone smiled stupidly, wagging his head from side to side, and Garibaldi told him to go fuck himself.

Noises were already coming from the intersection of Via Irnerio and Via Indipendenza, and the people were flowing through the gates in only one direction, towards Piazza dei Martiri, from where the procession would soon be setting off for the Margherita Gardens.

Above the heads of the crowd, the red banners of the Trade Union Headquarters, which was based not far away and organised the whole festival, with food stalls, merry-go-rounds in the gardens and a speech by comrade Montagnana in the afternoon.

Alongside the banners, which were gradually increasingly in number, some signs and placards were appearing.

‘Garibaldi, you’ve still got your eyesight, can you read what it says up there?’

Garibaldi pulled the corners of his eyes with his fingers to help himself focus.

‘Sadry, honoulable comlade, I Chinese, I no understand.’

Bottone advised him in no uncertain terms to engage in sexual congress with himself.

‘It says: “No to Italy in the EDC”, “EDC = SS”, “Dollars and bombs: recipe for new Nazis.”’

‘Oh, fine,’ Bottone said, rubbing his hands enthusiastically. ‘Let’s see if we can’t get hold of everyone else, it looks like things are about to get going here.’

‘What d’you mean, Bottone?’