Ciba leant an elbow on the table and his forehead on his palm, in an attempt to do three manoeuvres at once:
1.
Check out which officials were present at the event;
2.
Work out who the goddess sitting next to him was;
3.
Contemplate what he would say.
The first manoeuvre took a few seconds. The whole of the Martinelli senior staff was sitting in the second row: Federico Gianni, the managing director, Achille Pennacchini, the general manager, Giacomo Modica, the sales manager, and a rally of editors including Leo Malagò. Then the whole gynaeceum of the press office. If even Gianni had unnailed his arse from Genova, then that showed the Indian's book meant a lot to them. Who knows, maybe they hoped to sell a few copies.
In the first row he recognised the Councilman responsible for Culture, a television director, a couple of actors, a thread of journalists and some other faces he'd seen a thousand times but couldn't remember where or when.
There were little cardboard markers with the names of the participants on the table. The goddess's name was Alice Tyler. She was murmuring the translation of Tremagli's speech in the ear of Sarwar Sawhney. The old man, with his eyes closed, was nodding as regularly as a pendulum. Fabrizio opened the Indian's novel and realised that the translation was by Alice Tyler. So she wasn't just the translator for the evening. He began to seriously think that he had found his perfect woman. As beautiful as Naomi Campbell and as intelligent as Margherita Hack.
Fabrizio Ciba had been reflecting for some time on the idea of building a stable relationship with a woman. Perhaps this could help him to concentrate on his new novel, which had paused at chapter two for the past three years.
Alice Tyler . . . Alice Tyler . . . Where had he heard that name before?
He almost fell off his chair. It was the same Alice Tyler who had translated Roddy Elton, Irvin Parker, John Quinn and all the new breed of Scottish writers.
She must know them all! She must have had dinner with Parker and then afterwards he fucked her in a London squat, amidst fag-ends stubbed out on the carpet, used needles and empty beer cans.
A frightful suspicion. Has she read my books? He needed to know now, straight away, immediately. It was a physiological need. If she hasn't read my books and has never seen me on television, she might well think that I am just anybody, might mistake me for one of those mediocre writers who get by attending presentations and cultural events. All of this was unbearable for his ego. Any balanced relationship, where he was not the star, caused unpleasant side effects: dry mouth, headspins, nausea, diarrhoea. If he were to seduce her, he'd have to rely solely on his charm, on his biting wit, on his unpredictable intelligence and not on his novels. And it was a good thing he didn't even take into consideration the hypothesis that Alice Tyler had read his works and hated them.
He came to the last point, the most prickly one: what would he talk about once the old gasbag finished his rambling speech? Over the past few weeks Ciba had tried to read the Indian's huge volume a handful of times, but after ten pages or so he had turned on the television and watched the athletics championships. He'd really made the effort, but it was such a deadly boring book that it had boiled his balls. He had called a friend of his . . . a fan of his, a writer from Catanzaro, one of those insipid, subservient beings who buzzed around him in an attempt, like cockroaches, to feed themselves on the crumbs of his friendship. This one, though, unlike the others, had a certain critical spirit, a certain, in some ways, bubbly creative ability. Someone whom he might, in an undefined future, get Martinelli to publish. But for now he assigned this friend from Catanzaro secondary tasks, such as writing articles for him for women's magazines, translating pieces from English into Italian, library research and, like now, reading the behemoth and composing a nice short critical summary that he could make his own in quarter of an hour.
Trying not to be too obvious, Ciba slid the three pages jotted down by his friend out of his jacket.
Fabrizio, in public, never read. He spoke freely, he let himself be inspired by the moment. He was famous for this talent, for the magical sense of spontaneity that he bestowed upon his listeners. His mind was a forge open twenty-four hours a day. There was no filter, there was no depot, and when he started in on one of his monologues he captivated everyone: from the fisherman from Mazara del Vallo to the ski instructor from Cortina d'Ampezzo.
But that evening a bitter surprise was awaiting him. He read the first three lines of the summary and blanched. It spoke of a saga revolving around a family of musicians. All of them forced, thanks to an unfathomable destiny, to play the sitar for generations and generations.
He grabbed the Indian's book. The title was The Conspiracy of the Virgins. So why was the summary about A Life in the World?
A terrible realisation. The friend from Catanzaro had made a mistake! That dickhead had cocked it up and done the wrong book.
He devoured the blurb in desperation. There was no mention at all of sitar players, but of a family of women on the Andaman Islands.
And at that very moment, Tremagli terminated his monologue.
5
He was crushed that the Durendal which had cost him three hundred and fifty euro would end up above his father-in-law's fireplace. Saverio Moneta had bought the sword with the idea of slaying the caretaker of the Oriolo Cemetery, or in any case with the idea of using it as a sacrificial weapon for the blood rites of the sect.
The traffic moved forward at a walking pace. A row of palm trees, burned by the winter, were covered in coloured lights that twinkled on the bonnets of the Mercedes and Jaguars sitting in dealerships’ forecourts.
There must have really been an accident.
Saverio turned on the radio and began searching for the traffic station. A part of his brain was working ceaselessly in search of another plan of action to propose to Murder and the others.
And what if, for example, we murdered Father Tonino, the priest from Capranica?
His mobile began ringing again. Please . . . Serena . . . Not again? But the screen displayed the words ‘PRIVATE NUMBER’. It had to be the old bastard hiding his number in an attempt to fuck him over.
Egisto Mastrodomenico, Serena's father, was seventy-seven years old and yet he tapped away on the mobile phone and the computer keyboard like a sixteen-year-old boy. In his office on the top floor of the Furniture Store of the Thyrolean Master of the Axe, he had a whole battery of computers connected to video cameras, the likes of which would have made a Las Vegas casino-owner jealous. The productivity of the fifteen salesmen was monitored throughout the whole day, worse than being inside a reality TV show. And Saverio, who was the department manager of the Thyrolean furniture shop, had four cameras pointed on him alone.
No, I can't bear having to talk to him this evening. He turned the volume of the car radio up, trying to silence the phone.
Mantos hated his father-in-law with such intensity that he had got irritable bowel syndrome. Old Mastrodomenico used every opportunity to humiliate him, to make him feel like a poor wimp, a freeloader who held his job at the furniture store simply because he was married to the old man's daughter. He would insult him not just in front of his colleagues, but even in front of customers. Once, during a spring sale, he had called him a moron, shouting it into the overhead speaker system. Mantos's only consolation was knowing that sooner or later the bastard would snuff it. Then everything would change. Serena was an only child, which meant he would become the manager of the entire furniture shop. And yet a part of him had even started to wonder if the old man would ever die. He'd gone through it all. They'd removed his spleen. They'd ablated a sebaceous cyst from his ear and he nearly went deaf. He had an eye ravaged by cataracts. At the age of seventy-four years he had slammed his Mercedes at two hundred kilometres an hour against a tip-up truck waiting at the Agip petrol pump. He was in a coma for three weeks and he had come-to even more pissed off than before. Then they diagnosed him with i
ntestinal cancer, but seeing as he was elderly the tumour was unable to spread. And if that didn't suffice, during the twins’ christening he had slipped on the steps in front of the church and broken his pelvic bone. Now he lived in a wheelchair and it was up to Saverio to take him to work in the morning and take him back home in the evening.
The phone kept ringing and throbbing in the tray next to the gearstick.
‘Fuck you!’ he growled, but that bloody sense of guilt written in his chromosomes forced him to answer. ‘Papa?’
‘Mantos.’
It wasn't the old man's voice. And there was no way that he knew about his Satanic identity.
‘Who's this?’
‘Kurtz Minetti.’
Upon hearing the name of the high priest of the Children of the Apocalypse Saverio Moneta closed his eyes and reopened them. He squeezed the steering wheel with his left hand and with his right the mobile phone, but it slipped out of his hand like a wet bar of soap, ending up between his legs. He took his foot off the clutch to get to the phone and the engine began hiccuping and turned itself off.
Behind him horns were honking while Saverio shouted at Kurtz: ‘Hang on . . . I'm driving. Hang on while I pull over.’
A motorcyclist on a big three-wheeled scooter knocked on the passenger window: ‘You realise you're a fuckwit?’
Saverio picked up the phone, started the engine again and managed to pull over.
What did Kurtz Minetti want from him?
6
As soon as Tremagli concluded his speech, the audience began pulling themselves up in their seats where they had cuddled up, stretching their numb legs, patting each other on the back out of solidarity at having survived such a gruelling test. For a second Fabrizio Ciba hoped that it would end there, that the professor had used up all the time available for the event.
Tremagli looked at Sawhney, convinced that he would comment, but the Indian smiled and, once again, lowered his head in a sign of recognition. At that point the poisoned chalice was passed to Fabrizio. ‘I believe it's your turn.’
‘Thank you.’ The young writer rubbed his neck. ‘I will keep it short.’ Then he turned towards the audience. ‘You all look a little worn out. And I know that, over there, a delicious buffet awaits.’ He cursed himself the moment the words came out of his mouth. He had offended Tremagli in public, but he recognised in the eyes of the audience a spark of approval that confirmed what he had said.
He looked for a way in, any nonsense to get him off to a start. ‘Ahhhh . . .’ He cleared his throat. He tapped the microphone. He poured himself a glass of water and wet his lips. Nothing. His mind was a blank screen. An emptied chest. A cold starless universe. A jar of caviar without the caviar. Those people had come here from all across the city, facing the traffic, struggling to find a parking space, taking half a day off because of him. And he had fuck-all to say. He looked at his audience. The audience that were waiting with bated breath. The audience that were wondering what he was waiting for.
La guerre du feu.
A fleeting vision of a French film, seen who knows when, came down into his mind like a divine spirit and tickled his cortex, which released swarms of neurotransmitters that rained down on the receptors ready to welcome them and to awaken other cells of the central nervous system.
‘Forgive me. I was distracted by a fascinating image.’ He tossed back his hair, adjusted the height of the microphone. ‘It's dawn. A dirty and distant dawn of eight hundred thousand years ago. It's cold, but it's not windy. A canyon. Low-lying vegetation. Stones. Sand. Three small hairy creatures, a hundred and fifty centimetres tall, covered in gazelle skins, are in the middle of a river. The current is tempestuous, it's a full-blown river. One of those water courses which, many years later, American families will travel down harnessed with inflatable life-jackets atop coloured rafts.’ Fabrizio took a technical pause. ‘The water is grey and it is shallow and freezing. It only comes up to their knees, but the current is bloody strong. And they have to cross the river and they move forward, placing each foot carefully. One of the three of them, the biggest, whose hair braided with mud makes him look like a Jamaican Rastafarian, holds a sort of basket tightly in his hands, one of those things made with small woven branches. At the centre of the basket a weak flame flickers, a miniscule flame prey to the winds, a flame that risks going out, poor little thing, which needs to be fuelled continuously with kindling and dried cactus pads, which the other two hold tightly in their hands. At night they take turns to keep it alight, curled up inside a damp cave. They sleep with just one eye closed, taking care that the fire doesn't go out. To gather wood, they have to brave the wild beasts. Enormous and frightening. Tigers with teeth like sabres, hairy mammoths, monstrous armadillos with spiky tails. Our little ancestors are not at the top of the food chain. They don't see it from the top downwards. They are in a good position in the hit parade, but above them are a couple of creatures with hardly a friendly little attitude. They have teeth as sharp as razors, poisons capable of nailing a rhinocerous in thirty seconds. It is a world full of thorns, spikes, stingers, of colourful and toxic plants, of miniscule reptiles which spray liquids like Cif bathroom cleaner . . .’ Ciba touches his jaw and glances encouragingly towards the affrescod vaulted ceiling of the hall.
The audience were no longer there; they were in prehistory. Waiting for him to continue.
Fabrizio wondered why the fuck he had carried them back into prehistory and where he was hoping to end up. No matter, he had to continue.
‘The three of them are in the middle of this river. The biggest one, the fire-carrier, is at the head of the line. His arms are as stiff as pieces of marble. He holds the weak bonfire in front of him. He can feel his muscles screaming in pain, but he moves forward, holding his breath. One thing he cannot do, fall over. If he falls over, they will no longer have the heat needed not to die of cold during those never-ending nights, the heat needed to roast the leathery warthog meat, the heat needed to keep the ferocious beasts away from the camping place.’ He took a peek at the Indian. Was he listening? He appeared to be. Alice was translating for him and he was smiling, keeping his head slightly cocked, like blind people sometimes do. ‘What's the problem, you are probably all wondering? What does it take to light a fire? Do you remember the history book in middle school? Those illustrations of the famous primitive man, with a beard and a thong, who rubs two rocks together next to a nice little bonfire like a diligent boy scout? Where are those bloody flint stones? Have you ever found one on a walk through the mountains? I haven't. You feel like lighting a cigarette while hiking, you're out of breath but a Marlboro is just what you need, you haven't got a lighter and so what can you do? Of course! Pick up two stones off the ground and – snap – a spark. No, my friends! That's not how it works. And these very ancestors, unlucky for them, live one hundred years before that genius, a nameless genius, a genius no one has ever thought of dedicating a monument to, a genius as important as Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein, who will discover that certain stones, rich in sulphur, when rubbed together make sparks. These three men, to make a fire, must wait for lightning to fall from the sky and burn a forest. An occurrence that does happen occasionally, but not that often. “Sorry, I need to roast this brontosaurus, I don't have any fire, darling. Go and look for a wildfire,” says the Hominid mum, and off her son goes. She will see him three years later.’
The audience laugh. There are even a couple of brief spurts of applause.
‘Now you understand why these three must keep the fire alive. The famous sacred fire . . .’ Ciba took a deep breath and lavished a big smile upon the audience. ‘Why I am telling you all of this, I have no idea . . .’ Chuckling. ‘On the contrary, I believe I do know why . . . And I think that you have all understood why, too. Sarwar Sawhney, this exceptional writer, is one of those beings who has taken on the difficult and terrible responsibility of keeping the fire alive and handing it over to us when the sky darkens and the cold settles in our souls. Culture is a
fire that cannot be put out and re-lit with a match. It needs to be cared for, kept high, fuelled. And every writer – I consider myself to be one of them, too – has a duty to never, ever, forget about that fire.’ Ciba got up from his chair. ‘I would like everyone to stand. I am asking you, please. Stand up for just a moment. Here with us is a great writer who must be honoured for what he does.’
Everyone stood up amidst the din of chairs and broke into a wild applause for the old Indian man, who began bobbing his head, looking rather embarrassed. ‘Bravo! Well done! Bravo! Thanks for being you!’ someone, who had probably heard Sawhney's name for the first time tonight and certainly wouldn't buy his book, called out. Even Tremagli, reluctantly, was forced to stand and applaud that farce. A girl in the second row pulled out a lighter. Everyone else quickly followed suit. Flames lit up everywhere. Someone turned the big chandeliers off and the long room was lit by a hundred little flames. It was like being at a Baglioni concert.
‘Why not?’ Ciba pulled out his lighter, too. He saw the managing director, the general manager and the whole Martinelli group follow suit.
The writer was satisfied.
7
‘Mantos, I have a proposal to make. Come to Pavia tomorrow for a business lunch. I've already got you booked on a flight for Milano.’
Saverio Moneta was on the side of the motorway to Capranica. He couldn't believe that the famous Kurtz Minetti, the high priest of the Children of the Apocalypse, the one that had decapitated a nun with a double-edged axe, was talking to him. He rubbed a hand across his burning forehead. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes. I'll get one of my followers to come and pick you up from Linate.’
Kurtz's voice was reassuring and accent free.