Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers

The day of her sudden appearance by the pool came back to me, the smell of her lit cigarette, the husky voice, her feet slapping over the pool patio, the stones that a thousand invisible hands had apparently pounded. The truth was the thing I had sensed but pushed aside, because it was too obvious to accept.

* * *

Maybe an hour passed before the groundskeeper returned. It was almost dark. He showed no surprise to see me.

“I’m going to Rome,” he said, blotting rainwater from his face with the sleeve of his coat. I noticed then that it was the same kind of mechanic’s jacket, cheap gabardine, quilted red on the inside, that my cousins Andy and Scott wore.

I nodded.

He started the car and pulled out of the lot, and then we were on the autostrada, headlights streaming toward us, blurred by rain.

All the little snub-trunked Fiats on the autostrada, matchbox cars in white, beige, or yellow, a few of them cherry-red and gleaming in the rain like children’s plastic slickers. I gazed out the windshield, water running down the glass in uneven sheets. I didn’t turn to look at the groundskeeper. He glanced over once or twice, but not in a way that seemed meaningful or sympathetic. Still, his lack of surprise at having found me in his car felt like sympathy. He said nothing.

I wouldn’t have guessed that his silence would be so effective. It grafted me in. To a way of proceeding. Of not knowing where we were going except someplace in Rome, not knowing where I would stay or what I would do. I had my passport, the camera, and the equivalent in lire of ten U.S. dollars.

* * *

In retrospect, it would have been far easier had I not fled straight to his car, outside the tire factory on the industrial outskirts of Milan.

Not gotten inside, once I found it, unlocked, in the parking lot.

Not sat quietly when he got in, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot.

Each of those moments, if taken, would have required less of me than to separate from what he led me to, once I was there. Once I was there, in Rome, it was simply too late.

* * *

It was a long drive, and I let the sound and vibrations of the car motor stun my thought patterns into something uniform and calmed. I wondered if I could still be myself with all context, all my reason for being here left behind, discarded.

We were on the autostrada, nothing but green signs with white letters in a rounded but affectless font. The sulfur lamps that angled high over a divided road not meant for the scale of the human. I thought of Sandro and his youthful idea of making industrial paintings to roll out on the autostrada. On the stairs leading to his mother’s stupidity box chamber was the same photo Sandro had, of T. P. Valera with Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, cutting a ribbon for the groundbreaking ceremony of the autostrada. Behind them a motorcade of Valera cycles. “Gas, tires, and oil,” Sandro said to me. “ You would think it’s a reference to a Pontiac muscle car. But no. It’s an incredible trifecta. My father and his cronies conspired to change the face of Italy. They wrecked the place and made piles of money. Brought in the so-called miracle, the postwar miracle, everyone in his own little auto, put-putting around, well enough paid from their jobs at Valera to buy a Valera, and tires for it, and gas.” Here I was on the Autostrada del Sole with a stranger who probably just thought of it as a highway, took it as a given that Italy had a central artery, a car culture, a tire company so large it was practically a public utility.

The groundskeeper and I did not speak until he stopped for fuel, and then only a few words. He showed me where the women’s bathrooms were and asked if I wanted a coffee. I patted cold water on my face, hoping it would shrink the puffiness from crying, and when I realized what I was doing, I laughed sadly at my mirrored self for still caring what I looked like, even now. Taking inventory of my face. Wetting my bangs to get them to lie straight. The groundskeeper and I each drank an espresso at the little bar without speaking. His name was Gianni, but the blank fog of his presence at the villa clung to him and I was hesitant to claim even enough familiarity to call him by his name.

It was night when we entered Rome through narrow streets, everything soaked and shining from rain. Water bubbled along the roadway, carrying leaves and debris. There were metal barricades blocking every side street we passed. Carabinieri in their white bandoliers blowing whistles and directing traffic. I asked what was happening.

Some of the streets were closed, Gianni said, because of the parade tomorrow.

“A parade?”

“A demonstration,” he said.

* * *

“Gianni Ghee-tarrr!” a girl called out as we entered the apartment.

Everyone looked up. At him, and then at me, and I could see that there was a silent but collective decision not to say anything. Not to ask who I was. Gianni nodded at them in affirmation, but affirmation of what I didn’t know.

After many hours of driving through darkness, silence, rain, it was jarring to be in a cramped and brightly lit apartment full of people, mostly men, who lay around on couches, some sprawled on the floor, one strumming an out-of-tune guitar. They weren’t a type I could place. They wore dirty clothes, black leather jackets, black turtlenecks. Their long hair was greasy, carefully parted. Most of them had mustaches. They reminded me of the plainclothes cops in Tompkins Square Park, who were always too severe and ominous despite their efforts to pass for hippies.

The girl who had announced Gianni’s arrival was sitting on the floor against the wall, curly hair spilling over her shoulders, big white teeth, and a large but delicate nose that made her seem friendly and approachable. I found I could only make eye contact with her and none of the others. “È arrivato,” she called out to someone unseen, in another room. A female voice answered back that Gianni was probably working for the CIA now. That was what it sounded like, but it was not spoken in the clearly enunciated Italian I heard at the villa. Everyone laughed but Gianni, who ignored them and asked if I wanted a glass of water.

There was a tiny kitchen filled with cigarette smoke and the sound of frying and of pots being banged around. Gianni went in for the water and then excused himself for a moment, retreated to the room from where the unseen girl had made the CIA comment. One of the men got up from the couch and insisted I sit. I thanked him and asked his name. “Durutti,” he said. “Have you heard of me?” Everyone laughed.

Gianni and the woman in the other room were talking. Were they arguing? Only because I was his charge did I take note that he probably had a girlfriend here. That he was talking to her now. In a moment she would emerge and meet the stray he had dragged into this apartment, and I would try to communicate to her that I wasn’t any threat.

A radio was turned on and everyone quieted. I figured we were just listening to it. I didn’t know it was being broadcast from another room in the apartment. The announcer was talking about the demonstration tomorrow. The parade, as Gianni had called it.

“We’ve received a tip from a comrade in one of the security police battalions, about their preparations for tomorrow’s march.” There was a long list of armored cars and weaponry at various barracks that were being readied. All leave was canceled. Gunners with submachine guns would be stationed on roofs. “I think it is safe to say the carabinieri will be marching alongside us. Thank you to the brave comrade who has provided us with this information. See you tomorrow, seventeen hundred hours, Piazza Esedra.”