To Marcella and Corrado,
who never left
Sure, let’s eat it. —Adam and Eve
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
April 1978
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
May 1988
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Giorgio Faletti
Copyright
PROLOGUE
I’m Bravo. And I don’t have a dick.
That could be my introduction. It doesn’t change a thing that I go through life with a nickname instead of an official first and last name. You are who you are, whatever the bureaucratic trails that follow in your wake, like streamers from a carnival. My life wouldn’t have been any better or worse, whatever name I gave with each handshake. The waves no higher or lower: the water just as choppy, the winds just as rough, the voyage every bit as daunting. Regret would be pointless. Being nameless just gave me an extra layer of shadow in which I could cloak myself: the fleeting glimpse of a face, a faint silhouette, nothing there, no one. I was what I was—so namelessness was exactly what I needed. Why add a clause or a rider?
As for that other anatomical detail, it’s worth devoting a little time to the subject.
I wasn’t born this way.
It’s not like some doctor, presiding over my birth, stared in disbelief at my blank infant groin as I emerged from the maternal fissure, completely unequipped for life’s principal task, or cast a baffled glance at my mother as she lay there, exhausted from the last grunting effort of giving birth. There was no doting sympathy for a child growing up with the burden of a distinctive handicap—distinctive, to say the least—a handicap likely to draw cruel mockery in the years to come. No tragic adolescent confessions, head bowed, gaze riveted on my shoes as if I were trying to read some higher meaning into my shoelaces.
No, when I came into the world I had all the right equipment, with everything in its place. Oh, I was equipped, all right, perhaps overequipped, in light of what happened later. Until things changed so radically one fine day, my equipment was the cause of plenty of trouble for a variety of adventuresome and reckless young (and not-so-young) ladies who wanted nothing more in life. I always figured that was their problem, not mine.
Until the day that one young lady’s problem became my problem.
The how and the when and the why of the matter will never be subjected to the scrutiny of future historians. It was a simple case of the wrong person noticing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Guilty as charged, for whatever that’s worth. I make a full admission, though I have no regrets. Our lives are what they are, and nothing more. Sometimes there’s just no way—and no reason—to act any differently. Or if there was, I was oblivious to it. Now even the mere suggestion of a reason or motive would be just one more pin in a voodoo doll with my face on it.
One night—one of those turning points when your life changes course—someone was waiting for me, with a well-honed straight razor and a deep well of rage and sadism, ready to make me what I am today. He left me flat on my back, with a bloodstain spreading across my trousers; my voice waned to a whisper as the blossoming stain did my screaming for me. I was tossed out of the theater, kicked off the stage and into the audience. Hurled back into the farthest row of seats, I would say. And yet the pain of that cut was nothing compared to the pain of the applause.
Until that day, I had paid lip service to love and enjoyed sex for my own personal pleasure. Now my condition meant I was no longer obliged to promise that love, because I was no longer capable of receiving its monetary equivalent in exchange. That is to say, sex.
A man’s body held no appeal for me, and I no longer had anything to offer a woman.
Suddenly, peace reigned supreme. No more ups, no more downs, just flatland, stretching out. No more placid waters or stormy seas. Just the mocking irony of dead calm, the doldrums where sails neither belly nor rip. Now that I had no need to run, I had a chance to look around me and see how the world really works.
Love and sex.
Lies and illusions.
A moment of one, a moment of the other. Then off in search of the next stop, the next address jotted down with whatever comes to hand. Following your nose, your instincts, feeling your way. Blind, deaf, and mute, relying on a sense of touch and smell, the far reaches of instinct.
When I regained my sense of sight, my hearing, the ability to speak, I thought it over and understood.
I immediately accepted.
In the time that followed, I acted.
Since then, blood has been shed, a raw material that comes cheap everywhere around the world. People have died, and perhaps they were worth even less than the blood that was spilled. Some of those responsible for what was done to me have paid; others have gotten off scot-free. Like everything that culminates in death, this too started out small.
It all began when I realized that there were women willing to sell their bodies for cash and there were men willing to spend their money to get their hands on those bodies.
It takes a healthy dose of greed or resentment or cynicism to work your way into the middle of that transaction.
I had all three.
APRIL 1978
1
When Daytona and I walk out onto the street, it’s daybreak.
We stop on the sidewalk, a few feet apart, inhaling the cool morning air. Even in a big city, morning air gives the impression of purity. Actually, the breath that Milan exudes has halitosis, and both of us must have pretty bad morning breath ourselves. The only thing that’s pure is the impression, but even that’s something you can live on.
Daytona stretches his arms, yawns, twists both shoulders.
I thought I heard his spine crack, but maybe my ears are deceiving me. His face shows the signs of a night spent playing poker and snorting coke. He’s pretty messed up. You can see the muscles tensing around his jaw. The double comb-over that covers up his bald spot like a clever bit of sleight of hand and hairspray has started to sag, slipping off to one side, like a hairy beret. His complexion is sallow, and he has dark circles around his eyes. His pencil mustache makes him look like one of those nasty, neurotic cartoon characters who wind up being funny in spite of themselves.
He lifts his hand in front of his face; pulls back his shirt cuff, begrimed by the night-long card game; and looks at the time.
“Jesus, it’s almost six a.m.”
Daytona says this as if it were a problem. As if it were a rarity for him still to be up and about at this hour of the morning. As if there were someone who cared what he did with his life, aside from himself and occasionally the police. He drops his arm and the watch vanishes beneath the cuff. That wristwatch is the source of his nickname. For years, he’s worn a gold Paul Newman Daytona Rolex.
When he has the watch to wear.
It’s a sartorial detail that makes it easy to tell Daytona’s good times from his lean times. Just take a look at his left wrist. If there’s no watch, it means he’s pawned it. And if he’s pawned it then it means that Daytona is hustling his heart out to get the watch out of hock
. Without worrying much about what he has to do to lay hands on the money.
Well, this morning the watch is on his wrist and he’s just spent the night balls-out, luck running high, winning hand after hand at poker. After last call, we stayed on in the private room of the Ascot Club, the room next to the bar. Him, Sergio Fanti, Godie, Matteo Sana aka Sanantonio, and me. Bonverde, the owner, went home with his wife, hard on the heels of the last spectator. On his way out, he told Giuliano, the manager, to close the place down and lock up. Without too much interest in what might happen after he walked out. We stayed on in the private room, breathing in the lingering aroma of decadent humanity, in the hay-scented dankness of wall-to-wall carpeting that hasn’t been aired out for years. Someone put out the cards, packs of cigarettes, and a few yards of cocaine.
The hours sped past, the cigarettes and cards went around, and when the last snort of cocaine was just a distant memory, Daytona had become the unquestioned star of the evening’s entertainment. The jackpot was four nines slapped down on the table like a thunderbolt, dealing out death to a full house. Sweeping the pile of cash.
As if he’d just read my mind, Daytona turns to look at me.
“I was fucking lucky tonight. I needed that.”
I smile, even though I try not to. I turn to look at the intermittent flow of morning traffic. Scattered cars move lazily along Via Monte Rosa. Inside the cars are frightened ghosts returning home and other ghosts, convinced that they’re frightening, heading out for their daily damnation. As an impartial observer, I had the impression that Daytona had given the blindfolded goddess a name and address, with a few sleights of hand that were not entirely sportsmanlike. As far as I could tell, anyway. Not that it’s any of my business. I don’t gamble or play cards, so I don’t win and I don’t lose. I’ve always been the spectator who watches and minds his own business. Over time, this has evolved from a rule guiding my life to a pleasant routine. It’s a better way to live and, in certain circles, it’s a better way to stay alive.
I look back at him.
“Fucking lucky is right. How much did you win?”
Daytona scrutinizes my face in search of sarcasm. He’s satisfied there is none, or maybe he chooses not to see it. He slips one hand into his pocket without pulling out his wad of cash, as if he can count the money by touch. I can almost see his fat hairy fingers rumpling the bills roughly, the way people do with money that’s come easy.
“A million eight, more or less.”
“Not bad.”
“You said it. Yum, yum, yum, a rich pile of chips!”
He rubs his hands together with satisfaction, and it occurs to me that there are certain human beings who seem to be incapable of learning from past mistakes. I struggle to keep a smile from spreading across my face again. One time, during a poker game with guys he completely outclassed, Daytona couldn’t keep from repeating that gloating phrase, and he got punched in the eye by someone taller, stronger, and better armed than him. Of course, he had to take it without reacting. He went around for weeks with a black eye that made him look like a chubby, slightly melancholy Dalmatian. With a string of snickering mockery trailing behind him, like the long train of a wedding dress.
Behind us, the others emerge from the club.
They climb up the stairs under a sign that by night winks an invitation to step downstairs to the Ascot Club, the unrivaled temple of Milanese cabaret. The walls up and down the ramshackle staircase are lined with posters for the great talents that have passed through those walls, trodden that stage, looked up at those lights at the dawn of their careers. Every day, out on the street, by the front door, an illuminated billboard announces the names of the aspiring stars who will be appearing that night.
A marginal past, a glorious future, and a hopeful present. All gathered together under the old axiom that in Milan, late at night, after a certain hour, nobody’s out and about but cops, artists, criminals, and whores.
The hard part has always been telling them apart.
Giuliano is the last to emerge. He lingers behind, locking a roll-down shutter that seals up the Ascot Club once and for all, protecting it from the contamination of daylight.
The others join us.
Godie sidles over to Daytona and places his index and middle fingers, open like scissors, on the side of his neck.
“Tac! Got you. You fumb duck.”
Godie has a quaint and distinctive manner of speech and behavior. He’s a perfect distillation of the place, the time, and the people he frequents. It’s a circle of people who express themselves with a language that attempts to be clearly recognizable, if not necessarily original. You need only invert the first consonants of certain words, so that the black dog becomes the dack blog, good shit becomes shood git, and hard cash becomes card hash. And Diego, his real name, turns into his nickname, Godie.
Il Godie, to be exact. The one-and-only Godie.
Simple, and possibly a little stupid. But people choose the medals that they pin on their own chest.
Daytona pulls Godie’s hand away from his neck.
“You calling me a fumb duck? It’s just that none of you know how to play cards. You, least of all.”
Godie shoves his elbow.
“Aw, go fuck yourself. Remember, there was no one but me and the Cincinnati Kid in New Orleans.”
The sense of humor is always the same, a bit repetitive, sometimes inspired by the cabaret artists who perform nightly at the Ascot, in other cases an inspiration from which they draw.
Giuliano catches up with us. Like me, he stayed out of the poker game. He just dabbled in the ancillary debauchery. I think he raked off some of the winnings in exchange for providing the club as a venue. As always, of course, that’s none of my business.
“So, now what do we do?”
Sergio Fanti, average height, skinny, bald, with a prominent nose, looks at his watch. We all know by heart the words he’s about to utter.
“I have exactly enough time to head home, take a quick shower, and head straight for the office.”
Sergio is the only one of us who has a real job. He works in the fashion business and his rumpled but elegant suit confirms the fact. No one understands how he can reconcile his noches de fuego and rock ’n’ roll with a serious business activity, but he seems to pull it off. The only evidence of his misdeeds are a pair of dark bags under his eyes the size of a B cup: he wears them like a trademark.
Matteo Sana yawns. Then he runs one hand over his unkempt beard, veined with tufts of white, like the hair on his head.
“I’m going to swing by Gattullo for a cappuccino.”
Again, Godie scissors his two fingers into Matteo’s neck. With an accent and voice so intensely Milanese that it verges on parody, he seconds the idea.
“Tac! I’m with you. I see you and raise you. A cappuccino and a pastry.”
Giuliano looks at me and Daytona.
“You two coming with?”
Daytona taps the back of his left hand with his right index finger.
“I’ll pass.”
I shake my head.
“Ditto. I’m heading for my hut.”
We watch the four of them walk off and head over to Sergio Fanti’s BMW 528—in the end, Fanti has given in. Godie flaps his arms and talks excitedly, the way he always does when he’s a little high. They get in the car and, covered by the noise of the slamming car doors, the engine roars to life, puffing clouds of blue-gray exhaust out of the tailpipe. The car eases out of the parking spot and lurches off toward Piazza Buonarroti, in the direction of the Pasticceria Gattullo, the pastry shop and café at Porta Lodovica.
In my mind, I can see them stumbling into the café. In the time it takes them to drive over there, the place will have filled up with people ordering cappuccinos and pastries. Despite their stated intention of having cappuccinos and pastries themselves, they’ll probably order three whiskeys and a Campari instead. A dozen heads will turn, up and down the counter. Then they’ll all troop off to thei
r respective apartments, and they’ll each pop a Rohypnol to get to sleep, a way of counteracting the lingering effects of the cocaine and their accelerated pulses from the amphetamine with which the coke has surely been cut. The night is over, and that’s how certain animals make their way back to their lairs.
Daytona and I are alone again, on the sidewalk.
“You know what would be the perfect way to top off a lucky night?”
“No.”
But I do know, of course. I know perfectly. Still, I want to hear him say it.
Daytona looks at me, his comb-over this way and that and his eyes glistening to the extent that they can after a sleepless night. Then he tips his head toward a point on the other side of the street.
“A trip through the Northwest Passage with that pine fiece of ass.”
I smile, this time without having to conceal it.
Across the street from the Ascot Club is a big office building, the Milan headquarters of Costa Britain Shipping. It’s four stories tall and it takes up a good portion of the block—from the corner of Via Tempesta stretching past us all the way to Piazzale Lotto. Reinforced concrete, aluminum, steel, and sheet glass. And overhead lights always on, illuminating ceilings and empty desks, to remind everyone that in this city, even when people are at home sleeping, someone is thinking about work.
A group of people have just stepped out of the glass doors. Cleaning women. They’ve emptied the trash cans, vacuumed the wall-to-wall carpeting, and scrubbed the bathrooms, hard laborers of the night who’ve toiled till now so that the hard laborers of the daytime will find a nice clean workplace when they arrive. A couple of them hurry off immediately, heading for bed or breakfast. The other cleaning women have stopped to talk, perhaps experiencing the same sensation that we had: at this time of the morning, the air is worth breathing. One of them has stepped aside to light a cigarette, and stands slightly separated from the group. She’s tall and slender, and her shapeless smock is incapable of concealing a certain attractiveness. Her hair is long and brunette and her face is fair and luminous.