Ten or so zebras, with a couple of foals in tow, crossed the road in front of them. Silvietta was beside herself. ‘Look at the little ones. They're so cute.’
They waited for them to go by and then continued their journey.
Saverio, in a disinterested tone of voice, asked his cousin: ‘Has Larita arrived yet?’
Antonio raised his arms. ‘I've heard that Chiatti reserved an apartment for her in the Royal Villa, but I don't know anything else.’
Shortly after, from between the tree tops an old three-storey building, crowned with a terrace and two turrets, appeared.
‘This is the Royal Villa.’
The back courtyard of the house, hidden by tall boxwood hedges, was frenetic with the coming and going of men and machines, the tyres of vans, pick-up trucks and Land-Rovers kicking up dust. Teams of workers in green uniforms offloaded food, bottles, table cloths, glasses, cutlery and tables under the command of men dressed in black who hollered like they were in a military prison. Under a canopy, squatting in the dust, the coloured beaters, wearing thongs, were eating from tin cups something that looked to be tortellini in broth.
In a corner were some prefab buildings that gave off smoke and the smell of food.
‘Those are the kitchens. Zóltan Patrovic will be here soon to check on how things are going. Please behave.’ Antonio's expression turned serious. ‘Don't be seen twiddling your thumbs.’
‘Who is Zóltan Patrovic?’ Silvietta gulped, feeling worried.
‘You can tell you are all from Oriolo. He's a famous Bulgarian chef. He's very demanding, so do your jobs well.’
The four of them got out of the buggy.
Antonio pointed at a man dressed in black. ‘Now go over to that guy there and ask him what you need to do. I'll see you later . . . And please, no fuck-ups.’
26
Fabrizio Ciba was waiting at the stoplight at the intersection between Via Salaria and Viale Regina Margherita astride his Vespa, which was puffing out black smoke. He had managed to find it and start it up again.
Two teenagers screeched alongside him, aboard a scooter, with their bum cheeks and their panties exposed from the top of their low-waisted jeans. They studied him for a moment, then they squealed excitedly and the girl sitting on the back asked him: ‘Excuse me? Are you Ciba? The writer on TV?’
Fabrizio unleashed his ironical expression, showing off his whitened teeth.
‘Yes, but don't tell anyone. I'm on a secret mission.’
The blonde girl asked him: ‘Are you going to the party at Villa Ada?’
The writer shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘I have to go.’
The other young girl chewed gum and asked: ‘You couldn't get us in, could you? Please . . . please . . . I beg you . . . Everyone's going to be there . . .’
‘I wish, but I think it's impossible. I would have much more fun if you were there, too.’
The light turned green. The writer slipped into first gear and the Vespa sprang off. For a second Ciba saw himself reflected in the shop window of a boutique. For the occasion he had put on a pair of light brown linen trousers, a light oxford-blue shirt, a faded dark blue Cambridge tie that had belonged to his grandfather, and a grey-and-white striped three-button madras cotton J. Crew jacket. All strictly crushed.
The closer he moved towards Villa Ada, the more the traffic increased. Bands of police tried to detour the cars onto Via Chiana and Via Panama. A police helicopter buzzed above them. On the pavements the crowds crammed together behind barriers, held in check by riot police. Many of them were young protesters who were demonstrating against the privatisation of Villa Ada. Huge banners hung from balconies. There was a really long one that said: ‘CHIATTI MAFIOSO! GIVE US BACK OUR PARK!’ Another one said: ‘LOCAL GOVERNMENT BUNCH OF THIEVES!’ And another: ‘GIVE VILLA ADA BACK TO THE ROMANS!’
Fabrizio decided to park the Vespa and reflect on an aspect he hadn't taken into consideration: his public image as an intellectual would suffer from his participation at Chiatti's party. He was a left-wing writer. He had made the opening speech at the national congress for the Partito Democratico, demanding an urgent commitment to Italy's dying cultural movement. He never turned down a presentation at the Leoncavallo or at the Brancaleone.
I still have time to go home, no one has seen me yet . . .
‘Hey, poofter!’
Fabrizio turned around. Paolo Bocchi, at the wheel of his Porsche Cayenne, had pulled up beside him.
No way!
‘Mr Writer, dump that old wreck and get in my car! Make a proper entrance.’
‘Go on ahead, I've got to make a work call, I'll see you inside,’ Fabrizio lied.
The surgeon pointed at a group of young men wearing keffiyehs. ‘What the fuck do those shitheads want?’ And he drove off, honking his horn.
What to do? If he wanted to leave, he had to be quick about it. Photographers and television crews were circling hungrily in search of invited guests.
While he watched the kids from the halfway houses scream at the police ‘You are arseholes, and arseholes you'll always be’, Fabrizio was reminded of something that occasionally he inexplicably forgot: I am a writer. I talk about life. In the same way that I denounced the felling of the thousand-year-old Finnish forests, I can badmouth a group of nouveau riche and mafiosi. A nice tough article in the Culture section of Repubblica and I'll sort the lot out. I am different. He took a look at his crushed clothes. You will never buy me! I'll show you all for what you are! He climbed back on his Vespa, put it into first and faced the crowd.
The spectators in the crowd behind the barriers were beginning to change. Now there were more young girls and entire families with their mobile phones out, starting to take his photo and shouting at him to stop.
Finally he made it to the entrance, guarded by about twenty hostesses and a band of private security guards. A young blonde woman swathed in a tight grey suit came up to him.
‘Good morning, pleased you could join us. We weren't sure whether you would come, you didn't RSVP.’
Fabrizio slipped off his Ray-Bans and looked at her. ‘You're right, I'm terribly guilty. How can I gain your forgiveness?’
The girl smiled. ‘You have nothing to be forgiven for . . . I just need your invitation.’ Fabrizio took out the envelope. Inside it, along with the invitation, was a magnetic card. He handed it to the hostess, who swiped it over the reader.
‘Everything is fine, Doctor Ciba. I recommend you park the Vespa here on the left and walk the catwalk on foot. Enjoy yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ the writer answered and put the scooter into first.
He turned left past the red carpet which led up to the entrance, towards a clearing where BMWs, Mercedes, Hummers and Ferraris were parked. He put the Vespa on its stand, he took off his helmet and tidied his hair. While he was checking himself in the wing mirror, he heard a suffocated shout from behind the barriers: ‘You fake!’ He didn't even have the time to understand what was happening before something heavy hit his left shoulder. He thought for a moment that the Black Bloc had thrown a hail storm of sanpietrini stones at him. He went pale and backed away terrified, crouching down behind an SUV. Then, swallowing mouthfuls of air, he took a look at the offended shoulder. A Sicilian arancino, stuffed with rice and peas, had exploded all over his jacket and was slowly dripping onto his chest, leaving an oily dribble of mozzarella and boiling hot sauce. Fabrizio ripped the arancino from his shoulder as if it was an infected leech and slung it to the ground. Injured, mocked and humiliated, he turned towards the crowd. Three men with curly hair and beards were staring at him with hate in their eyes worse than if he'd been Mussolini (who happened to be arrested in Villa Ada). They were wearing jacket and tie, pointing at him and yelling in unison: ‘Ciba, you bastard! Die, Ciba, die! You're a traitor.’ The writer managed to dodge a maxi one-litre cup of Coke, which exploded on the bonnet of the SUV.
An armoured vehicle then spewed out a phalanx of riot police, who attacked the
violent dissidents with truncheons. The three men tried to defend themselves with a barrier, but the guy who had thrown the arancino was hit on the eyebrow by a policeman and a stream of blood burst across his face, transforming it into a red mask. The other two ended up on the ground beneath a shower of truncheon blows.
A young policeman took the writer by his arm and dragged him backwards, screaming: ‘Get away, get away from there!’
Fabrizio, feeling distressed and confused, followed him without taking his eyes off of the bloodied man who kept on shouting from his position on the ground: ‘Bloody Ciba! You're just like all the oooooooothers! You traitorous hypocrite! You make me sick.’
While the riot police kept laying into him, flagship cars stopped by the red carpet and the invited guests walked their catwalk amidst the flashbulbs of fans and photographers. Fabrizio Ciba took refuge between the cars with his heart thumping in his chest. ‘What the fuck . . .?’ he gasped, drying the sweat on his brow. ‘They're all crazy!’
‘Are you OK?’ the policeman asked him.
Ciba nodded.
‘What are you waiting for? Go, go . . . It's dangerous here.’
Fabrizio felt like he would die. No, no, I'm going back home.
He couldn't leave. He could imagine the newspaper headlines: The writer Fabrizio Ciba, challenged by CENTRI SOCIALI at Chiatti's party, flees. Even though those three guys looked like anything but kids from CENTRI SOCIALI.
He was in the shit now and the only way out, at this stage, was to spend a couple of hours at the party and then go home and write a fiery article. He headed to the red carpet with his jacket stained with tomato and oil. He decided it was best to take it off and carry it nonchalantly over one shoulder.
At the front of the entrance to the Villa the situation was completely different. Big elegant cars kept on spitting out actors, football players, politicians and television showgirls amidst the clapping and the screams of the spectators who were squashed behind the barriers like chicken on a grill. He had never seen anything close to it, not even at the Festival of Venice. The VIPs waved and the women let people take photographs of their designer outfits. One girl managed to break through the barriers and threw herself at Fabio Sartoretti, the comic from Bazar. But the bodyguards nailed her to the ground and threw her back into the crowd, which sucked her straight in.
Ciba took his courage into both his hands and walked with his head down, hoping nobody would recognise him, towards the red carpet. But seeing his fans waving at him so warmly, he couldn't resist and began waving back.
At that moment a BMW with darkened windows braked in front of the catwalk. From the car emerged a pair of tanned legs that seemed never to end. Then the rest of Simona Somaini came out. Miss Italia 2003, who had then gone on to become a successful actress with the show SMS From Beyond, was wearing a bikini that showed her back, and a fair part of her bum, while it lightly covered her breasts but not her flat, tanned stomach. He recognised next to her the famous showbusiness agent Elena Paleologo Rossi Strozzi, who looked, compared to the diva, like a pygmy with tapeworm. Although Ciba was still shaken by the incident with the arancino, as soon as he saw that pure-bred filly he thought that his day wasn't going to be so bad after all. And most importantly, he thought about the fact that they'd never fucked, and how that needed to be rectified.
Fabrizio threw open his chest, tucked in his stomach, put on his ineffable cursed writer expression. He lit a cigarette, stuck it in the corner of his mouth and walked by her distractedly.
‘Fabri! Fabri!’
Ciba counted to five, then turned around and looked at her with a perplexed expression on his face, as if he was looking at a work by Mondrian.
‘Hang on . . . Hang on . . .’ Then he shook his head. ‘No . . . Sorry . . .’
The actress wasn't really offended, more disorientated. In the last few years the only time someone hadn't recognised her was when she went to visit her Uncle Pasquale in the Blind Institute in Subiaco. Now, she simply thought that the writer was short-sighted.
‘Fabrizio? It's Simona. Don't tell me you don't remember me?’
‘Recanati, perhaps?’ Fabrizio said the first name that came to mind. ‘For that conference on Leopardi?’
‘Porta a porta last month!’ Somaini would have liked to pout, but the Botox wouldn't let her. ‘The sad story of little Hans . . .’
Ciba slapped himself softly on the forehead. ‘Shit, it's the Alzheimer's . . . How could I forget the Venus de Milo! I've even got your calendar in my bathroom.’
Somaini let out a bird call similar to the sound of the curlew in mating season: ‘Don't tell me you have my calendar! A writer like you with a calendar for truckers.’
Fabrizio lied shamelessly. ‘I love February.’
She patted her long hair. ‘What are you doing here? I didn't think you were the sort of person who came to this sort of party.’
Ciba raised his hands. ‘I don't know . . . A hereditary but never before identified form of masochism? An unbearable desire for socialising?’
‘Fabrizio, can you smell a sort . . . of yummy smell of sauce and tomato and mozzarella?’
The last arancino that Somaini had eaten had been at her confirmation.
‘Hmph . . . No, I can't smell it,’ Ciba said, sniffing the air.
Rita Baudo from the Channel 4 news saved him from the awkward situation. She came along with a microphone, and followed by a cameraman.
‘So here is the actress Simona Somaini, as always looking gorgeous, with the writer Fabrizio Ciba! Don't tell me I've found a scoop!’
With a Pavlovian reflex, Somaini suctioned up to Ciba's arm. ‘What do you mean, Rita? We're just friends!’
‘You don't have anything to share with the viewers of Varietà?’
Rita Baudo pushed the microphone against Ciba's teeth, and he shoved it away again, annoyed. ‘Didn't you hear what Simona said? We're just old friends.’
‘Do you mind saying hi to our viewers?’
Fabrizio waved a hand in front of the camera: ‘Hi.’ And then he walked away with Somaini on his arm.
Baudo turned towards the cameraman with a sly expression on her face. ‘I think these two are not telling us the whole truth!’
An inhuman scream came from the infernal circle beyond the barriers. Baudo began to run. Paco Jimenez de la Frontera and Milo Serinov, the centre-forward and the goalkeeper for Roma FC, were getting out of a Hummer.
27
About three hundred metres from the parterre of VIPs, in the courtyard behind the Royal Villa, the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had been put to work. Zombie was swearing and unloading cases of Fiano d'Avellino from a van. Mantos had ended up in the kitchens working as a skivvy. Murder and Silvietta had been entrusted with polishing six cases of silver cutlery for the Indian-style dinner.
The Vestal rubbed a fork on a cloth, her eyes lowered. ‘You did it again.’
Murder snorted. ‘Listen, can we let it go just this once . . .?’
‘No, we can't let it go just this once. You promised that you'd tell him in the car. Why didn't you do it?’
Murder impatiently threw an unpolished knife in amongst the polished ones. ‘I tried to . . . But in the end I couldn't do it . . . After that speech he made, how could I? And hang on, why do I always have to say the difficult stuff?’
Silvietta bounded to her feet. Sometimes she couldn't stand her boyfriend. ‘Look, you were the one who said that you'd tell him. That it wasn't a problem.’
Murder opened his arms wide. ‘And, in actual fact, where is the problem? As soon as I can, I'll tell him.’
His girlfriend grabbed him by the wrist. ‘No, we go and tell him now, straight away! So we can relax. All right?’
Murder got up against his will. ‘All right. Sometimes you're so annoying . . . Just think how pissed off he'll be . . .’
The two of them crossed the courtyard, being careful not to be seen by Antonio, who was standing on top of a box, giving orders to everyone. He had
turned from a mild-mannered polite person into a kapo.
Murder and Silvietta walked into the kitchens. There were three enormous rooms full of stainless steel appliances, steam, smells and every type of aromas. There had to be at least fifty cooks dressed in white and wearing the chef's hat. And an army of skivvies running around busily. The sound of saucepans and voices was deafening.
They found Saverio sitting on a stool with a small knife in hand. He was peeling a pile of potatoes that could feed all of Rebibbia prison.
Mantos saw them and softly whispered: ‘What are you doing here? Are you out of your minds? If they catch you . . . I told Zombie that we'd meet outside in half an hour for a briefing, then I'll tell you the whole plan. But now get out of here.’
Murder looked at him and, twisting himself in knots, he whispered: ‘Hang on . . . We have something important to tell you.’
Mantos got up and took them over to a corner. ‘What is it?’
‘Well . . .’ Murder just couldn't say it.
‘Well what? Come on, hurry up!’
A fluted voice with a strong Eastern European accent behind them said: ‘Who gave you two permission to enter the temple?’
A sepulchral silence descended on the kitchens. Even the exhaust fans and blenders seemed to have fallen quiet. The swallows outside had been struck dumb.
The Beasts turned around and found themselves facing, enveloped in the steam of broiled meat, a monk. Only his cassock was of black silk, and silver birds of paradise had been woven into the material. He held his fingers crossed beneath the wide sleeves of his outfit and he was barefoot. From beneath the hood you could see a pointy white beard, two square cheekbones, a beak-shaped nose and two grey eyes as cold as a winter day on the Caspian Sea.
The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had no doubt that this was Zóltan Patrovic, the unpredictable Bulgarian chef.
Saverio had not seen the great Rasputin, the cursed monk who had condemned the tsar and his family with his tricks and his witchcraft. But he thought that the man standing in front of him had to be his reincarnation.