Wu Ming - 54

Voices from inside the house, the maid, you’re not allowed in here, how dare you? Fuck off, I’m a federal agent, I’m a fucking G-man! Where’s the boss? You’re drunk, you can’t just. He turns up in the garden. The maid apologises: excuse me, sir, I tried to stop him, but. Cary and David get up from the sofa. Cary recognises him: Bill Brown. FBI agent. Plastered. Black suit, white socks, white shirt, black tie. No hat. You prick, they told me you were back in town. Weren’t you going to kick me up the ass? How dare you say Mr Hoover’s a faggot? Who’s getting kicked in the ass now, eh? David, let me introduce agent Bill Brown, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I don’t believe it: this guy here? Do you have a warrant, Brown? This is trespass. You commie-lover, you’re not even American! Mr Brown, what you are doing violates all the Bureau’s rules of conduct. I’m actually beginning to doubt that you really are a federal agent. I ask you to leave my property, or I swear that this time I will act without further warning. What the fuck do you. Cary’s right fist smashes into Brown’s jaw. Brown staggers, slips, falls into the pool. He is unconscious, and in danger of drowning. David jumps in. Ten minutes later the ambulance shows up. I am a witness to the fact that it was self-defence, my friend. No, David. I struck the first blow. What does it matter? You did well. That G-man has a glass jaw. Damnation, I nearly broke my hand, just before my return to the screen! Better stick it in the ice bucket. This is going to make Hoover furious. Can you imagine tomorrow’s headlines! No, nothing’s going to get out. Hoover will muzzle the reporters. In any case, you’d be better off heading for the Côte d’Azur. One day I’ll write a book. I’ll put all the strange Hollywood stories in it. Well, don’t write about this. Fine, old man. The moon’s out. Look at it, Cary, the moon’s a balloon. This is just one big stage set. Tell that to Frances Farmer. A sigh from David. You’re right. The moon looks like a balloon.

Cary thinks about something else, hand in the bucket, next to the bottle of champagne.

What do you think of Grace Kelly?

Chapter 7

Bologna, Bar Aurora, 8 May

Let’s be clear about this: we in the Bar Aurora are not like those old women who are forever looking at other people’s plates because they have only bones on their own. Sure, from now on we won’t have to go on and on about the great fucks we’ve had. But even without that there’s still stuff to talk about, you bet, because the times we live in are a disgrace because of the nuclear ‘experiments’, and Bologna FC are a disgrace because Coach Viani is too defensive even when the team plays scrubby teams like Legnano, and Italy is a disgrace because the priests are in charge.

Every now and again we’ve all got a friend with problems, and when that happens it’s normal for him to talk about them, and it may lead to gossip, but usually you’ll find some way to help him. So if this friend is the one who jollies up your evenings, and he’s got a long face, everyone else ends up feeling the same, so his troubles become a shared affair, something you have to resolve together.

Maybe people who don’t hang out in bars can’t fully understand this, but there’s nothing worse than when the manager has his bollocks in a twist. You can’t joke about anything, no one gets a drink on credit, you have to avoid a whole series of topics, and even the espressos taste of chicory.

In short, for almost a month now Capponi has been like a trapped bluebottle, forever muttering, and since his brother got back it’s been even worse, the two of them are barely talking to each other except to say ‘pass me that’. The worst thing of all is that you can’t talk about the problem as though it wasn’t a problem, you have to keep your trap shut, and because you’re in their bar everything gets complicated. The only way is to sit everyone down around the table, with L’Unità in the middle, pretending to read it and comment on it, and every now and again Bottone reads out a headline and if Capponi comes over to our side of the bar Garibaldi starts talking about Indochina.

‘Oh, listen to this: “The banner of Free Vietnam is flying over Dien Bien Phu. The latest attack lasted a few hours. ”’

The Walterún periscope emerges over the sea of white and bald heads. No one in sight. La Gaggia fires first: ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s Pierre’s fault. He suddenly disappears, as though he was the only person in the world!’

‘Well?’ Bottone butts in immediately. ‘Didn’t your son do exactly the same thing? Had he gone to his mum and said, I’m going to shoot at the Nazis on the Cansiglio, she’d have tied him to the bed, isn’t that right?’

‘Excuse me,’ Garibaldi interjects. ‘What does it matter who’s to blame? I’m fed up to the back teeth with both of them: why don’t we ask them to tell us what’s up, once and for all; they can fuck off if they want to, but at least they can stop this nonsense.’

‘“Solemn obsequies at the coffins of the thirty-seven workers pulled from the Montecatini mines. Fifty thousand Italians at the funerals of the victims of Ribolla. ”’

‘Because in my opinion Pierre hasn’t told us the whole story. Doesn’t he think it’s obvious that he’s worried about things? If his father really was as well as he says, he wouldn’t have that face on him.’

Bottone licks a finger and turns the page. ‘Come on, come on, where does his father come into it? It’s a fight between brother and brother, there’s nothing any of us can do about it, it’ll pass in due course.’

‘You reckon? Then you don’t know Nicola Capponi, “the Bear”.’

‘You’re right! A leopard can’t change his spots!’

Garibaldi raises his hand to tell us to stop, and Bottone lowers his head to read: ‘“Asti, 7 May. We regret to announce the death at around 4 p.m. today, in his home at 20 Via Cavour, in our city, of the very popular former cycling champion, Giovanni Gerbi, known to all fans of the sport as the Red Devil.”’

‘Really? How old was he?’

‘No age at all. When would he have stopped racing? 1910, was it? I remember it clearly.’

‘Listen to this, while we’re on the subject of cycling: “Giro d’Italia, live television reports from the stages, in those towns that have a TV connection.”’

The advertisement is met with more sighs and groans than the abuses of power in the Montecatini factories. The fact is that in the Bar Franco, next door, they’ve just bought a television, and until yesterday nobody cared much, but while television may be a miracle, there’s never anything to watch on it, and anyway the people in the Bar Franco had looked like a bunch of wankers, throwing away a shedload of money to show that they’re better than everyone else. Then Bortolotti, on the day of the Milan — San Remo cycling race, didn’t show up here to listen to the radio, and the day after he came and told us that the sprint, there on the screen, is incredibly exciting. And he also pointed out that the World Cup starts in June, and they’re showing the games on television, and Franco told him that in that month alone he expects to recoup what he paid for the set, by adding on ten lire for coffee and fifty for alcohol.

Nicola, behind the bar, muttered something and that was enough to make us understand that that he doesn’t even want us to talk about this. Anyway, the way he is at the moment you could tell him the Red Army was entrenched in Budrio and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

‘Why don’t we have a collection?’ Walterún pipes up all of a sudden.

‘A collection?’

‘Yes, everyone gives a bit, because if we wait to win the lottery, we’ll never see the damned thing. On the other hand, if we all put in a bit, we’ll soon get the 150,000 together, or am I wrong?’