Umberto Eco - Numero Zero

“So what are we going to do?”

“First, calm down. Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and quietly cash Vimercate’s check, and you can draw out whatever you have, if you’ve got any.”

“I’ve been saving since April, so I also have two months’ salary, around ten million lire, plus the twelve that Simei gave me the other day. I’m rich.”

“Wonderful. I’ve also put something aside. We’ll take the lot and run.”

“Run? Aren’t we now saying we can wander around with nothing to fear?”

“Yes, but do you really want to live in this country, where everything will continue as it always has, where you go to a pizzeria and worry whether the person at the next table might be a secret agent, or might be about to murder another magistrate, setting off the bomb as you’re walking past?”

“But where do we go? You’ve seen, heard how the same things were happening throughout Europe, from Sweden to Portugal. Do you want to end up in Turkey among the Grey Wolves, or in America, if they let you in, where they kill presidents and where maybe the Mafia has infiltrated the CIA? The world’s a nightmare, my love. I’d like to get off, but they tell me we can’t, we’re on an express train.”

“Darling, we’ll look for a country with no secrets and where everything is done in the open. In Central and South America you’ll find plenty. Nothing’s hidden, you know who belongs to which drug cartel, who runs the bands of revolutionaries. You sit in a restaurant, a group of friends passes and introduces you to the man in charge of arms smuggling, all neatly shaved and perfumed, dressed in a starched white shirt that hangs loose from his trousers, the waiters address him reverently with señor here and señor there, and the chief of the Guardia Civil goes across to pay his respects. They are countries that hold no mysteries, everything is done in the open, the police demand to be bribed as a matter of right, the government and the underworld coexist by constitutional decree, the banks make their living through money laundering, and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t have other money of doubtful provenance, they’ll cancel your residency permit. And they kill, but only each other, they leave tourists in peace. We could find work on a newspaper or in a publishing house. I have friends who work down there in the celebrity romance magazines — a good, honest job, now I come to think of it, the articles are trash but everyone knows it, and they find them amusing. And those celebrities whose intimate secrets you’re about to reveal have already revealed them the day before on television. It takes only a week to learn Spanish, and then we can find our South Sea island, my Tusitala.”

I can never start anything on my own, but if someone passes me the ball, I sometimes manage to score a goal. The fact is that Maia is still quite ingenuous, whereas age has made me wise. And if you know you’re a loser, the only consolation is to think that everyone around you, even the winners, are losing out.

That’s how I answered Maia.

“You’re forgetting, my love, that Italy is slowly turning into one of those havens you want to banish yourself to. If we’ve managed to both accept and forget all those things the BBC has recounted, it means we are getting used to the idea of losing the sense of shame. Didn’t you see that all those interviewed were happily telling us what they’d done and were almost expecting a medal for it? No more Baroque chiaroscuro, everything in broad daylight, as though painted by the impressionists: corruption rife, Mafiosi officially in parliament, tax dodgers in government, and the only ones to end up in prison are Albanian chicken thieves. Decent people will carry on voting for the hoodlums because they won’t believe the BBC, or they don’t watch such programs because they’re glued to trash, perhaps Vimercate’s home shopping channels will end up on early evening television, and if someone important is murdered, he gets a state funeral. Let’s escape: I’ll go back to translating, you go back to your magazines for ladies’ hairdressing salons and dentists’ waiting rooms. Meanwhile a good film in the evening, weekends here at Orta — and to hell with everyone else. All we have to do is wait: once this country of ours has finally joined the Third World, the living will be easy, as if it were all Copacabana, the hottest spot south of Havana.”

Maia has restored my peace of mind, my self-confidence, or at least my calm distrust of the world around me. Life is bearable, you just have to make the most of it. Tomorrow (as Scarlett O’Hara said, another quote, I know, but I’ve stopped talking myself and have let others take over), tomorrow is another day.

The island of San Giulio will shine again in the sunlight.