Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Dean’s pores inhaled the warm air. ‘I love it here.’

‘We haven’t even left the airport yet,’ said Elf.

‘The one, the only – Utopia Avenue!’ A man approached with open arms, with a silver tooth, a cream shirt and a booming voice that needed turning down from ten to three or four. ‘I am’ – he put his hand over his heart – ‘Enzo Endrizzi, your promoter, admirer, friend. And you’ – he chose Jasper first – ‘are Jasper de Zoet, il maestro. ’

‘Mr Endrizzi.’ He offered a hand.

The promoter clasped it in both of his. ‘Enzo, always.’ He turns to Dean. ‘Dean Moss, il cronometro. ’

Il what? ‘Cheers for bringing us over, Enzo.’

‘Is your fans who bring! They write, they telefono me, they crazy for “Purples Flames”! You write this song, Dean, yes?’

Dean swells a little. ‘As it happens, yeah, that’s one o’ mine.’

‘A song stu-pen-doso . We make gigs, do interviste , and next week we go up, up, up to number one in Italia. And you , Elf ’Olloway, la sirenessa. ’ He raised Elf’s hand to his lips.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr Endrizzi. Enzo.’

‘You break ten thousand hearts this week, in Torino, Napoli, Milano, Roma.’ He turned to Griff. ‘So you are … not Levon? No no. You is “Greef Greefin” because you do a lot of “grief” for me, is right?’ Enzo made a pistol of his hands and cackled. ‘“Stand and deliver! Your money and your life!”, eh?’

‘Levon will be back any minute,’ said Elf. ‘He went to phone you. There was a little confusion over the arrival time.’

Enzo sighed. ‘For Anglo-Saxons, time is a master. For Mediterraneans, time is a servant.’

Enzo’s Fiat minibus thumped along the Italian highway at twice the top speed of the Beast. Driving was a big silent bruiser whom Enzo introduced as ‘Santino, my right-hand man and left-hand man’. The highway cut through hills of beige and heat-proof green. Suburbs emerged from bombsite rubble. Cranes reached halfway to heaven. Tall dark trees corkscrewed upwards. Traffic swerved, lawlessly. People honked horns instead of signalling, and traffic lights appeared to be ornamental. Jasper retained his sickly pallor from the flight. ‘Were you born in Rome, Enzo?’ Elf asked.

‘Cut my arm, the Tiber River flows out.’

‘Where d’yer learn yer English?’ asked Dean.

‘From GIs, from Tommies, in Rome, in the war.’

‘Weren’t kids evacuated to the countryside?’ asked Elf.

‘No place is safe. All Italia a battlefield. Certo , Roma was magnet of bombs, but so is other cities, and if you at wrong time, wrong place, boom ! In July in 1943, biiiiiig raid destroyed San Lorenzo. Royal Air Force. Three thousand dead. My parents also.’

‘That’s horrible,’ said Elf.

‘Is twenty-four years ago. Many water under bridge.’

‘London had the shit bombed out of it too,’ said Dean.

Enzo flashed his silver tooth. ‘By Italian Air Force?’

‘Mussolini was on Hitler’s side, right?’

‘ Certo – Mussolini’s men killed my uncles and cousins, who was partisans in the north. A movie, a story, is simple: good contro bad. Reality is –’ his fingers waggled and interwove ‘– così .’

Dean wondered if European history might be more complicated than in the war films he’d seen growing up.

‘Disaster is the mother of opportunity,’ said Enzo. ‘GIs arrive, they give Marvel comics, I learn English, they had dollars, I get things they need, I take commission, I eat that night. Black-market people, they help me, I help them. Is Italian way. To be young was protection. If military police catch a man, they shoot. If they catch a boy, usually no. Was my university of the life. I learned to ’uss-ssel .’

‘What was that, Enzo?’ asked Griff.

Dean worked it out. ‘“Hustle”?’

‘Exactly. ’Uss-ssel. Is a skill I use still, as promoter.’

The Fiat was cut up by a school bus. Santino beeped his horn, leaned out of his window and yelled, never mind that at the speed they were travelling his words couldn’t possibly reach the offending driver. Kids leaned out of the bus windows and made a stabbing hand-gesture at Santino, with the index and little fingers pointing straight, like a pair of horns. ‘What’s that about?’ asked Dean.

‘Is cornuto. Horns of man of wife who go with other man.’

‘A cuckold,’ said Elf. ‘Folk songs are full of them.’

A farmhouse flew by. A shallow-angled roof, narrow windows, biscuit-coloured stone walls. Sloping fields were cultivated with rows of what looked to Dean like Kentish hops.

‘Is a vineyard,’ said Enzo. ‘Grapes, for the wine.’

Dean wondered who he’d be if he’d been born in that house and not in Peacock Road, Gravesend. He wondered if identity is drawn not in indelible ink, but by a light 5H pencil.

The gridded high window is no more than a foot wide and six inches in height. A head might fit through but never the body. A blade of dusty sunlight falls on the rusty bed frame and crusty mattress. A shit-spattered porcelain hole in the corner exhales evil vapours. The floor is clammy concrete. The graffitied walls are blotched with mould. The steel door has an eye-slot and a floor-level hatch. Nowhere to sit but the mattress. Now what? He hears the muffled din of the motorway, scraps of distant Italian, and the drip, drip, drip of a cistern.

Hopefully Ferlinghetti only wants to scare us into forgetting the two thousand dollars.

Dean has no idea about drugs penalties in Italy. The Rolling Stones had their drugs charges overturned recently. But they’re the Stones, and that was England.

Minutes creep by. Dean’s indignation is cooling. The beating he took is starting to hurt. He wonders how Elf’s doing, and how Imogen’s holding up. The death of an infant puts his predicament in perspective. Levon, Jasper and Griff know he’s here. He wasn’t abducted without witnesses. He’s British. Italy’s not Russia or China or Africa where they could take me round the back and put a bullet in my head. Dean’s trial – if it comes to that – would be a drawn-out, costly headache. Why bother when they can just deport him? Last, Dean is not a nobody. He’s a somebody with a song in the Italian Top Five. Last night Utopia Avenue filled a two-thousand seater in Rome …

‘Two thousand people!’ Griff half shouted into Dean’s ear over the din in the wings of the Mercurio Theatre. ‘From Archie Kinnock to this in fourteen months! Am I fookin’ dreaming?’ Sweat-drenched, Dean squeezed Griff’s shoulder as he drank. Dean was hoarse, wrecked, jubilant and temporarily indestructible. This last round of roars and whistles was for the band, but also for Dean’s new song ‘The Hook’, a work in progress. The Mercurio Theatre liked it just as much as ‘Darkroom’ and ‘Mona Lisa’. The applause settled into a marching giant’s clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap , clap, clap …

Levon appeared. ‘A third encore? They want it.’

Elf glugged from her water flask. ‘I’m game.’

‘I never turn down two thousand Romans,’ said Griff.

‘Seems rude to say no,’ agreed Dean. ‘Jasper?’

‘Sure.’

Enzo appeared, smiling like a promoter on the last night of an amply profitable tour. ‘Friends, you is all fant aaaaaa stici !’

‘So’s this crowd,’ said Dean. ‘They’re mental.’

‘In England, you …’ Enzo mimed zipping his lips. ‘In Italia … ’ he posed operatically ‘… we show! This noise is noise of love.’