In 2004, in order to fatten the local government's coffers, the capital city's mayor decided to auction the entire area of Villa Ada for the astronomical sum of three hundred million euro.
The auction took place on Capitoline Hill on the 24th of December, amidst protests by infuriated Romans at what would go down in history as ‘the big rip-off’. Bidders included celebrities of the calibre of Bono from U2, the Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, Sir Paul McCartney, Air France and a cartel of Swiss banks.
Unexpectedly, it was snapped up for the sum of four hundred and fifty million euro by Salvatore Chiatti, nicknamed Sasà, a businessman from Campagna (but otherwise of obscure origins) who had in the course of the nineties managed to amass an immense portfolio of real estate. He had at one point been in jail on charges of tax evasion and cattle-stealing, but thanks to the pardon he had been set free.
A few days later, in an interview with the daily newspaper Il Messaggero, the businessman explained the acquisition as follows: ‘My mum always took me there when I was little. I was driven by nostalgia.’ A big lie, since Chiatti had spent his childhood in Mondragone, working in his father's garage. The journalist had gone on to ask: ‘And what do you plan on doing with it?’
‘It will be my Roman residence.’
For a few years the Villa was closed. Locals formed a committee to return the park to the Romans. People said that Chiatti had actually bought it as an investment and was looking for foreign partners to transform it into a residential area, with golf courses, horse-riding clubs and go-kart racing.
In 2007 the renovations began. The boundary walls were raised by ten metres and rolls of barbed wire were placed on top. Every fifty metres along the walled perimeter were little towers hung with clusters of video cameras.
The Marquess Clothilde, the widow of General Farinelli, from her penthouse suite on Via Salaria was able to glimpse through the branches a slice of the park. The elderly woman had revealed to a journalist from the weekly magazine Panorama that she could see workers coming and going non-stop. They were planting trees, clearing the land. And she had even seen two giraffes and a rhinoceros. The journalist, however, didn't give her credence because the Widow Farinelli was seventy-eight years old and had the beginnings of Alzheimer's.
But the marquess had seen correctly.
Sasà Chiatti had built marshland, rivers and quicksand, and committed himself to repopulating the park. He had bought from the neglected zoos and abandoned circuses of the Eastern countries bears, seals, tigers, lions, giraffes, foxes, parrots, cranes, storks, macaques, Barbary macaques, hippopotamus and piranhas, and he had scattered them throughout the one hundred and seventy hectares of Villa Ada. All of the animals had been born and bred in captivity, hence docile and dependent on the food supplied by the guardians. They lived in a natural paradise where the primordial rules of prey–predator no longer existed. With the passing of the months, the diverse fauna had found a sort of balance. Each species had carved out its own ecological niche. The hippopotamus positioned themselves in the little lake next to the old kiosk of the cafeteria, and they didn't move from there ever again. The crocodiles and the piranha colonised the second artificial body of water, not far from the swings and the slides. Lions and tigers formed a colony on Mount Antenne. The Australian bats, huge beasts weighing six kilos each, took refuge in the catacomb. Beside the ex-Embassy, gnus, zebra, camels and herds of buffalo that Sasà had brought in straight from Mondragone grazed on a big grassy plain.
With the avian breeds, things were a little more complex. Stefano Coppé, lying on the ground next to his Burgman 250 scooter after having been rear-ended by an Opel Meriva on the exit between the Salaria and the Olimpica, saw a flock of vultures circling overhead and understood that the situation was serious. A pair of condors built their nest on the Rossetti family's balcony, in Via Taro, and tore Anselmo, the pet tabby cat, to pieces as he tried desperately to defend the small terrace. The athletes of the Acqua Acetosa centre witnessed kites and barn owls perching on the bars of the rugby goal posts. The fishmonger on Via Locchi was plundered of a sea bass weighing three kilos by a fish eagle. Parrots and toucans slammed into the windscreens of cars driving along the ring road.
Sasà Chiatti's idea was simple and magnificent at the same time: to organise a housewarming party so exclusive and sumptuous that it would be remembered throughout the centuries to come as the biggest, globally important event to take place in the history of our republic. And he would go from being famous as a suspicious real-estate magnate to being famous as a radiant millionaire and eccentric. Politicians, entrepreneurs, people from showbusiness and from the sports world would come to court to pay him homage, just like the Sun King at Versailles. But to achieve this, a party with music, dancing, buffet and cotillion would not be enough. It needed to be something so special and inimitable that everyone would be speechless.
The idea came to him one night while he was watching Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.
A safari! He would organise a surprise safari for the guests. His megalomania led him, however, to the decision that one was not enough. There had to be three of them. The classic English fox hunt, the African lion hunt with coloured beaters, and then the Indian tiger hunt, on elephants.
But in order for everything to work as planned, it was fundamental that nothing regarding the party preparation be leaked. All of the guards, workers and employees were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement.
He summoned the famous white hunter Corman Sullivan, whose claim to fame was having accompanied the writer Ernest Hemingway on the great hunt of 1934. Sullivan's age was undefined and ranged from eighty to one hundred years old. He suffered from chronic cirrhosis of the liver and had spent the last twenty years living in a rest home run by missionary nuns in Manzini Town in Swaziland, the small state bordering South Africa.
When he arrived at Fiumicino Airport, the hunter, in a weakened state because of a number of lung infections, had to spend three days in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber prepared for him at Civitavecchia. Then he was transported to Villa Ada in an ambulance. He spent two more days lying in bed spitting up blood and catarrh, waiting for the malignant tertian, which struck him cyclically, to drop. When he at last had the strength to walk, the old addict began working to organise the three hunts.
The fox hunt wasn't particularly complicated. Sasà Chiatti had restored the Savoy's stables and it held twenty-five purebred Lipizzans. And in the kennels he had a pack of beagles he'd bought from a pharmaceutical company that was going bankrupt. Even for the Indian-style hunt Sullivan didn't come across any complications. The real-estate magnate had bought four elephants affected with spotted dermatosis from a circus in Kracovia. The real problems arose with the lion hunt. They had to sign up about thirty beaters from within the communities from Burkina Faso and Senegal who roomed opposite the Termini station. They couldn't remember perfectly the art of hunting the big feline, but they guaranteed that they would do a good job, or at least survive the event. Seeing as he was at the station, Sasà also signed up some Filipinos to lead the elephants.
But his greatest stroke of entrepreneurial genius was to have his safaris sponsored by the designer Ralph Lauren, who chose khaki and hot pink as the dominant colours in the hunting uniforms.
Even the catering was planned in minute detail. Most parties lose points on the food, and at that stage you might as well bin everything else. Chiatti went all-out and called Zóltan Patrovic, the unpredictable Bulgarian chef-owner of the multi-award-winning restaurant Le Regioni. Each safari would have its own camp where the guests would take some refreshment with foods in the style of their hunt. The fox hunt camp consisted of big tartan rugs laid over a field of heather. There they would nibble on salmon, game and pudding, all reinterpreted with the Zóltan Patrovic touch. For the tiger hunt, the guests would be received on three house boats moored on the artificial lake. Chiatti had them brought in from Lake Dal in Kashmir. The sherpas would serve basmat
i rice, curried chicken and other Hindustani delights. For the African safari, Corman Sullivan insisted that there be five field tents and barbecues where they could grill ostrich meat and lamb.
The party would begin at lunchtime and would end at dawn the following day. Rest tents, information booths and free drinks kiosks would be set up here and there throughout the park.
Here is the programme for the party that Salvatore Chiatti, together with Ingrid Bocutte, the great Viennese event organiser, and Corman Sullivan, invented after a briefing that lasted six days.
Programme
12.30 p.m.
Welcome Buffet
2.30 p.m.
Speech by Salvatore Chiatti to the Guests
3.00 p.m.
Organisation of the Hunting Groups.
Wardrobe and Allocation of the Weapons
3.40 p.m.
Departure for the Safari
4.00 p.m. –
8.00 p.m. Hunt
8.30 p.m.
Arrival at the Bivouac and Dinner
11.00 p.m.
Return to Villa Reale
12.00 a.m.
Midnight Matriciana
2.00 a.m.
Concert by Larita in Villa Ada
4.00 a.m.
Fireworks Display by Xi-Jiao Ming and the Magic Flying Chinese Orchestra
4.30 a.m
New and Revival Dances by DJ Sandro
6.00 a.m.
Croissants
7.00 a.m.
End
24
Fabrizio Ciba awoke convinced that he had been resurrected from a dead man's coffin. He raised his right eyelid and a blade of sunshine pierced his pupil. With his eyes closed he began passing his tongue, as swollen as that of a calf, across his dry lips. He moved his head slightly. The pain was so intense that it left him breathless; he was unable even to complain. It was like an alternative current was channelled through his shoulder blades, along the cervical vertebrae, crossing over his grey matter, flowing from his temples into his eyebrows and from there inside his eyeballs. He touched his hair. Even that hurt. He rolled onto his side to hide from the sunshine. His stomach seized and expanded, sending an acidic jelly up the writer's throat. He very nearly vomited. ‘All right . . . all right . . . I'll keep still . . .’ he begged desperately. He lay there, traversed by electrical currents up top and scratched by gastric acid down below.
What the hell did I do last night?
He couldn't even remember how he had got home. He remembered that he had been progressing along drunkenly on Fori Imperiali and it was raining. His legs had suddenly given out. After that, everything was black.
Am I at home?
It was a struggle, but he managed to look around and conclude that he was in his jocks, under a blanket, on the sofa of his flat in Via Mecenate.
An old alcoholic writer from Udine had shared his own recipe for a potion to be used in cases of terminal hangover . . . even if what Fabrizio was feeling was more akin to the aftereffects of brain surgery than a hangover . . .
In a glass of water put three Alka-Seltzer, two Serenase, thirty-five drops of Algozone, eat a piece of bread and go back to sleep. You'll see . . .
You'll see what?
The writer from Udine didn't take into consideration the objective difficulty of concocting the pharmaceutical mix given the unstable condition Fabrizio was teetering in. And yet somehow Ciba managed to get up. He wobbled around the flat, grabbing onto everything. He went into the bathroom and with a huge effort prepared the potion. He drank it all in one gulp, burped and dragged himself back to the bedroom, where he closed the blinds, took the phone off the hook and slipped into bed. The touch of the fresh sheets, the smell of fabric softener on the pillow and the gentle weight of the duvet were the only pleasant sensations in the hell he had woken up to. He had the impression that the bed wrapped around him and protected him from all the baddies of the world, like the shell of a hermit crab.
He then died.
He came-to a few hours later. The sleep and the cocktail had worked. His temples still throbbed, and his limbs were as stiff as if he had scaled Monte Rosa, but he felt better.
He swayed around the flat, trying to take stock of everything. First of all he needed a cup of boiling hot coffee, a good old prosciutto and stracchino panini, and a shower.
Standing beneath the warm cascade, and with a full stomach, the bits and pieces of the evening fell into place. The outstanding facts were there:
1.
Martinelli wanted to give him the bullet;
2.
He had told his agent, his only ally, to go to hell;
3.
He'd had a minor heart attack, stroke, or something like that.
The last point worried him the least. As he was chronically terrified of doctors and pain, Fabrizio Ciba minimised every health problem. It was the fault of those tequila boom-booms.
The other two points, however, tormented him enough. He had to put a plan together quickly. Gianni was right: no other publishing house would ever pay him as much as Martinelli.
He went out onto the terrace and leaned against the railing. Sky and sun were blended together into an opalescent thing that weighed like a fetid gas on the capital, and the racket caused by the traffic even that high up was deafening. Below, he could see the Colosseum, and around it the to'ing and fro'ing of tourists, coaches, centurions and sellers of souvenirs. He thought about their squalid lives, the evenings in pizzerias, the holidays. The car loan. The queue at the post office. Simple, common problems.
They're so lucky! They don't know what real suffering is. Why don't I work in a real-estate agency? Free of this creative anguish, of the responsibility of having to say intelligent things to humanity. And if I just stopped? If I gave it all up for ever?
The image of J.D. Salinger, the wonderful author of Catcher in the Rye, came to mind. Jerome . . . you really are the best. Just like me, you barely wrote three books. Just like me, you wrote your masterpiece, then you disappeared and became a legend. I should do the same thing as you. With the royalties from The Lion's Den, in theory I could get away with it. I'll have to reduce my living expenses, though.
Fabrizio Ciba spent, a piece of crap here, a bit of mucking around there, fifteen thousand euro a month. Even if his last novel, Nestor's Dream, was published more than two years ago and had sold fewer than two hundred thousand copies, it was thanks to The Lion's Den that he could afford that lifestyle. That little one-hundred-and-twenty-page novel was still at the top of the bestseller lists. It had been translated across half the world and Paramount had bought the film rights.
If Ciba was prudent, he could easily live until he was eighty without having to lift a finger from morning to evening. Sure, he'd have to give up the penthouse flat in Via Mecenate. And he'd have to sell his hideaway on the mountains of Majorca. And most importantly, to keep up that aura of mystery that surrounded Salinger, he shouldn't do any more interviews. No programmes, no guest appearances on TV, no parties, no fucking around. In short, he'd have to transform into a cloistered monk and annoy himself shitless in a solitary hermitude for the rest of his life.
Maybe it can be done in America. Nature, desert, open spaces . . . But where would I lock myself up in Italy? In a one-room apartment on the Boccea? And then I'd be all alone, in a hermitage, without any pussy . . . I'd commit suicide in a couple of weeks.
The word ‘pussy’ thankfully brought him back down to earth.
He had to get away. Spend a couple of days in Majorca. There, in solitude, he would have time to pick up his novel where he'd left it off since . . .
His brain made an undetectable click, as if a safety switch had cut off the circuit. The thought, just as easily as it had appeared, melted away and his attention returned to Majorca.
Sure, but all alone . . . Who could he take with him? It had to be a woman who would help to give a bit of a boost to his self-esteem. But especially one who wouldn't bore him silly with children, husband
s and other mental hang-ups.
Alice Tyler . . . the translator.
No, too intellectual. And what's more, he'd made such an ass of himself that he wasn't sure she would agree to come.
Instead, he could pick and choose from the wealthy pot offered to him by the LUISS. At least seven female students from his creative writing course would have given up their civil rights to spend a weekend with him. There was this girl, too, Elisabetta Cabras, who was definitely a horny tart. She didn't know how to write for shit, but she had a natural talent for erotic scenes. You could tell that they were real-life experiences. Ciba imagined Cabras wandering naked around the swimming pool, with her big tits and a bloody mary in one hand, in front of the sun that drowned in the Balearic Sea.
He went back inside and sat down at the desk. The surface was messily covered with bundles of printed pages, books, bound papers, cans of beer and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette ends. He began looking for Cabras's essay, which he was sure would have included her mobile phone number. He knocked the mouse and the laptop screen lit up. There was the beginning of the second chapter of his new novel:
Vittoria Cubeddu had what is considered a clean Italian accent. On the contrary, the rest of the Cubeddu family spoke the slow, drawled dialect of Oristano. The house was also
He had spent three days writing those two sentences, obsessively continuing to change the adjectives, move the nouns, invert the verbs. Unwillingly he re-read it and then gagged on an acidic regurgitation. He slapped the computer closed.
‘What the fuck is this stuff? This was supposed to be the new national novel! I am a tosser!’
And he paced around the flat, kicking the sofa and Moroccan pouffes. He sat down on the bed, gasping for breath. The pain in his temples began tormenting him again. He had to snap out of it. Deep inside him, buried beneath a sea of useless crap, there was still the spirit of the writer that he had once been. He had to get him to re-emerge. A blank slate, stop drinking, stop smoking and knuckle down and write, with the strength and passion he had at the beginning.