Let the Games Begin

  He's seen me with the WB. I have to be more careful.

  ‘I'm up shit creek. Four Poles left me hanging at the last minute, so I'm looking for fill-ins. They need to carry cases of wine, set up tables in the garden, clear away. Stuff like that. Hard workers, but well-behaved ones. Even if they don't have much experience, all they need is the will to work and no misbehaving.’

  Antonio Zauli was the head waiter of Food for Fun, a catering company in the capital city, which, thanks to the supervision of Zóltan Patrovic, the unpredictable Bulgarian chef and owner of the extremely famous restaurant Le Regioni, had become Rome's number one for organising banquets and buffets.

  Saverio wasn't listening. And if I decapitated Padre Tonino with a stroke of the Durendal? He's got Parkinson's so I'd just be doing him a favour, really. Tomorrow, after the paediatrician, I'll take the sword to the knife-sharpener . . . No, that would be copying Kurtz Minetti a bit.

  ‘Saverio? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah . . . Sorry . . . I can't help you out,’ he faked.

  ‘My arse, you can't. You weren't even listening to me. You don't get it. I am desperate. I put my backside on the line with this party. I've been working at it for six months, Save’. He lowered his voice. ‘Swear you won't say anything to anyone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just swear.’

  Saverio looked around and realised just how ugly the ethnic lampshade was. ‘I swear.’

  Antonio whispered in a conspiratorial tone of voice: ‘Anyone and everyone's gonna be at this party. Tell me a VIP. Anyone at all. Come on. The first name that springs to mind.’

  Saverio thought about it for a second. ‘The Pope.’

  ‘Oh, come on. A VIP, I said. Singers, actors, football players . . .’

  Saverio huffed. ‘What do I know? What do you want from me? Who can I say? Paco Jimenez de la Frontera?’

  ‘The centre-forward for Rome. Bingo!’

  Now, if in the whole world there was a word Saverio Moneta hated, it was ‘bingo’. He, as did all serious Satanists, detested popular culture, slang, Hallowe'en and the Americanisation of the Italian language. If it were up to him, everybody would still be speaking in Latin.

  ‘Give me another one.’

  Saverio couldn't take it. ‘I don't know! And I don't care! I've got too much on my plate at the moment, I have.’

  Antonio now put on an offended tone of voice. ‘What's the matter? You're a weirdo, you know that? I'm giving you and your friends the chance to make some money, to participate in the most exclusive party of the last few years, to rub shoulders with famous people, and you . . . You tell me to fuck off?’

  Saverio felt like ripping out his cousin's carotid artery and bathing in his blood, but he sat down on the couch and tried to reassure him.

  ‘No, Anto, I'm sorry. Really, I'm not angry with you. It's just that I'm tired. You know, the twins, my father-in-law, it's been hard going . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I hear ya. But if you think of anyone who could help me out, give me a bell. I've got to find four kids by tomorrow morning. Think about it, OK? Tell them the pay's great and during the party there's even a concert with Larita and fireworks.’

  The leader of the WB pricked up his antennae.

  ‘What did you say? Larita? Larita the singer? Who did Live

  in Saint Peter and Unplugged in Lourdes? Who sings that song “King Karol”?’

  Elsa Martelli, known artistically as Larita, had been the lead singer of the Lord of Flies for a couple of years, a death metal group from Chieti Scalo. Their songs had been the anthems of the Evil One and they had been much appreciated by the Italian Satanic community. Then suddenly Larita had left the group and converted to the Christian faith, been baptised by the Pope, and had undertaken a solo career as a pop singer. Her releases were a flavourless mix of new age, teenage love affairs and feel good sensations, and as such had obtained a huge amount of success in the world. But she was loathed by all Satanists.

  ‘Yeah. I think it's her. Larita . . . The one that sings “Love Around You”.’ Antonio was no expert of pop music.

  Saverio realised that the air had a nice smell, of earth and grass from the freshly mowed street islands. The moon had disappeared and it was completely dark. The windows vibrated and the ficus was restless, tossed about by a sudden breeze. It began to rain. Huge, heavy drops stained the bricks on the small terrace, and a lightning bolt, like a crack in the wall, tore open the shadow and for an instant the sky lit up like it was day with an explosion that shook the earth, set off burglar alarms and started dogs barking.

  Saverio Moneta, seated on the couch, saw a fleet of large and twisted black clouds heading towards Oriolo Romano. One of them, the biggest of all, right in front of him, folded in half and stretched out, turning into a sort of face. Black eyes and mouth wide open. Straight after the shadows returned.

  ‘Madonna of Carmine!’ he sputtered instinctively. He ran to close the windows, where the rain was drenching the parquet floor. ‘All right!’ he panted into the receiver.

  ‘All right, what?’

  ‘I've found your three.’ Then he beat himself on the chest. ‘I'm the fourth.’

  12

  Fabrizio Ciba and Alice Tyler were sitting calmly on a marble bench opposite an oval-shaped fountain. On their right was a bamboo forest illuminated by a halogen floodlight. On their left, a hydrangea. Between them a distance of twenty centimetres. It was dark and cold. The lights from the villa behind them were reflected in the water, and on Alice's splendid legs.

  Fabrizio Ciba took a sip of alcohol from the bottle and passed it to the girl, who lifted it to her mouth. He had to make his move quickly. It was so cold they risked paralysis. What to do? Jump her? I don't know . . . You know how these Anglo-Saxon intellectuals can be.

  The dominator of the bestseller lists, the third-sexiest man in Italy according to the women's weekly Yes (behind a motorcycle racer and a sitcom actor with blond highlights), could not bear to think about being turned down. It would probably force him to undertake years of psychoanalysis.

  The silence was becoming eerie. He took a shot: ‘You've translated Irvin Parker's books, too, haven't you?’ As he spoke he realised that it was the worst thing to say if he was aiming for a quick approach.

  ‘Yes. Everything except his first one.’

  ‘Ah . . . Have you met him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Parker.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What's he like?’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Very.’

  No! This wasn't working. What's more, he felt she was distracted. The twenty centimetres between them felt like twenty metres. It was better to pull back in and leave it be. ‘Listen, mayb . . .’

  Alice looked at him. ‘I have to tell you something.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘It's a bit embarrassing . . .’ She took a deep breath, as if she was about to share a secret. ‘When I finished reading The Lion's Den, I cried . . . I felt terrible, just thinking that I was supposed to go out that evening. I stayed at home, I was too shaken. And the next day I read it again and it was even more beautiful. I don't know what to say, it was a unique experience . . . It holds so many analogies with my own life.’

  Ciba was overwhelmed with waves of pleasure, by endorphins trickling from his head downwards, swishing through his veins like petrol in a pipeline. Except that this time, unlike what happened with Sawhney, the pleasure channelled its way into the urethra, in the epididymides, into the femoral arteries and exploded inside his reproductive organ, which filled with blood, causing him a ferocious erection. Fabrizio grabbed her by the wrists and stuck his tongue in her mouth. And she, who was about to confess that she'd written him a long letter, suddenly found it between her tonsils. She muttered a collection of vowels, ‘Ae u aei!’, which meant ‘Are you crazy?!’ Instinctively she tried to free herself of the oesophagogastroduodenoscopy, but unable to do so she figured she was done for and put her hand
in his hair, pressed her lips hard against his and began windmilling her small, thick tongue.

  Fabrizio, feeling her giving in, wrapped his arms around her back and squeezed his chest up against hers, testing its firm consistency. She raised one of her marvellous legs. He pushed his erection against her. She then lifted her other marvellous leg. And he put his hand between her thighs.

  Federico Gianni, the managing director of Martinelli, and his faithful steed Achille Pennacchini were leaning on the banister of the grand terrace that overlooked the garden and Rome.

  Gianni was a dapper beanpole in his windswept Caraceni suits. When he was young he had played basketball in the A2 league, but at twenty-five years of age he had given up the sport to take on the management of a sports-shoe company. Then, who knows by way of which street and contacts, from starting in a small Milanese publishing house he came to land at Martinelli. He didn't know squat about literature. He treated books like shoes, and was proud of his way of thinking.

  The exact opposite of Pennacchini, who Gianni had pulled out of the University of Urbino, where he taught comparative literature, and placed at the head of the publishing house. He was an academic, a literary man, and everything about him was proof of this: his round, tortoiseshell glasses that sat in front of blue eyes ruined by books, the worn checked jacket, the rough cotton shirt with the buttons on the collar, the woollen ties and striped cotton trousers. He spoke very little. Always in a soft voice. And he hesitated. It was never possible to understand what he was really thinking.

  ‘Another one over.’ Gianni stretched. ‘I think it went well.’

  ‘Very well,’ Pennacchini echoed.

  Rome appeared like an enormous dirty blanket encrusted with diamonds.

  ‘This city is big,’ Gianni mused, staring out at the panorama.

  ‘Very big. It goes from Castelli across to Fiumicino. It is really immense.’

  ‘How big would its diameter be?’

  ‘Hmph, I don't know . . . At least about eighty kilometres . . .’ Pennacchini guessed.

  Gianni glanced at his watch. ‘How long till we go to the restaurant?’

  ‘About twenty minutes, maximum.’

  ‘The buffet was disgusting. The two salmon sandwiches I ate were dry. I'm hungry.’ He paused. ‘And I need to piss, too.’

  Following his boss's last statement Pennacchini bounced his head backwards and forwards like a pigeon.

  ‘I may piss right here in the garden. Out in the open. There's nothing better than pissing in front of this panorama. Look down there, it looks like a storm.’ Gianni leaned over the terrace and looked down into the darkness of the bushes. ‘Can you check to make sure no one can see me? Actually, if anyone comes this way, stop them.’

  ‘What should I say?’ Pennacchini murmured, uncertain.

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To whomever comes by this way.’

  Gianni thought about it for a second. ‘What do I know . . .? Entertain them, stop them.’

  The managing director walked down the steps that led to the garden, unzipping his trousers. Pennacchini took position, like a Swiss Guard, at the top of the stairs.

  13

  Larita.

  She was the chosen one. They would sacrifice the singer from Chieti Scalo to the Lord of Evil. During the party, Mantos would decapitate her with the Durendal.

  ‘Beats a nun any day . . . I'll show you, Kurtz,’ Saverio sniggered while he started jumping around the living room.

  What would happen once everyone knew that the singer who had sold ten million copies across Europe and Latin America, and had sung in front of the Pope on Christmas Day, had been decapitated by the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon? The news would be printed on the front page of newspapers across the globe. It was would rank there with John Lennon and Janis Joplin . . .

  Saverio hesitated. Was Janis Joplin actually assassinated?

  Who cares. All he cared about at that moment was that, with such a deed, he'd be remembered for ever. Websites, forums and blogs would be dedicated to him. His face would be printed on thousands of young boys’ t-shirts. And Satanist groups for generations and generations would be inspired by the figure of Mantos, and they would be charmed by his charismatic and psychotic personality, just like Charles Manson.

  Saverio grabbed Serena's iPod from the credenza next to the front door. He was sure that his wife had something by the singer. And in fact she did. He pressed play. The artist began singing in her melodious voice, rich with octaves, about a love story between two teenagers.

  Disgusting!

  That disgusting woman had brought together the two things he hated most in the world: love and teenagers.

  From the drinks cabinet he pulled out a bottle of Jägermeister and had a suck.

  It was so bitter.

  14

  The marble bench was not exactly comfortable. Fabrizio Ciba and Alice Tyler were entwined around each other while puffs of the Western wind shook the bamboo forest. The writer had one hand against the cement wall and the other on the translator's tit. The translator had one of hers shoved in behind his back and the other inside the writer's pants. His belt was stopping, like a tourniquet, the flow of blood to her hand, and so the only thing she could do with her numb fingers was squeeze his dick. Fabrizio was panting in her ear while trying to free her tit from the imprisonment of her bra but, having no luck, he decided that he would explore her intimate areas.

  They didn't notice the managing director, who, just ten metres away, was having a piss until they heard him sigh. ‘Ahhh! I really needed that. What a feeling of freedom!’

  The two of them froze like sole fish, and if they could have, like the Solea solea, they would have changed colour, camouflaging themselves with their surroundings. Fabrizio whispered: ‘Shush, someone's here . . . Shush, please. Don't breathe.’ They turned to stone, like two calchi from Pompeii. Both of them with their hands on the other's genitals.

  Another voice. Far off. ‘Ciba was good this evening.’

  How many of them are there?

  The voice nearest-by answered: ‘You have to admit that our Ciba is the best at this sort of thing!’

  ‘It's Gianni! The managing director!’ Ciba explained, in a whisper.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she said. ‘What if they see us?’

  ‘Shush. Don't say anything.’ Fabrizio raised his head. Gianni's silhouette stretched upwards from behind the hydrangea bush. Ciba lowered down again. ‘He's having a piss. He can't see us. He'll go away now.’

  But the managing director, who suffered from prostate trouble, kept shaking his thing in the hope of further downfalls.

  ‘Not bad, that idea of the story of the fire! Total crap, but effective nevertheless. We should call on him more often for this sort of thing, he's magnetic.’

  Fabrizio smiled, satisfied, and looked at Alice, who huffed, amused. What more could he want? He was snogging a sort of intellectual, mixed-race model, and at the same time he was being complimented with high praise from the king of his publishing house.

  He touched Alice's clitoris. She shivered and sighed in his ear. ‘Gently . . . gently . . . Otherwise I'll start screaaaaahhhh-ming . . .’

  His dick had become a block of steel.

  ‘Now, getting down to business . . . How far is Ciba into his new novel?’

  ‘It's hard to understand . . . From what little I've read . . .’ Pennacchini was speechless. It often happened that he would stop talking, as if someone had unplugged him.

  ‘What, Pennacchini? What have you read?’

  ‘I feel . . . Well, it's unfocused . . . More . . . How can I explain it . . .? Like a series of clumsy attempts rather than an actual story . . .’

  Fabrizio, who was working at undoing his belt, came stock-still. ‘

  It's crap, I get it. Like his last one, what was it . . .? Nestor's Dream. I'm not at all satisfied . . . And it's only selling so-so. From someone who has sold a million and a half copies, I expected, frankly sp
eaking, a lot more. With all that advertising we bought for him. Have you seen the quarterly returns? If it weren't for The Lion's Den . . .’

  Alice, with a masterly sleight of hand, had finally freed his erection and began masturbating him.

  ‘We need to discuss the contract for his next book. His agent is out of her mind. She demanded too high a sum. Before we sign, we have to think things through properly. We can't be strangled by someone who sells as much as Adele Raffo, at the end of the day, but she gets exactly half as much as him.’

  Ciba thought he would faint. That son of a bitch was comparing him to an obese nun who wrote recipe books! And what was this story about renegotiating the contract? Pennacchini was nothing but a big fat fake . . . He had told Fabrizio that Nestor's Dream was a necessary book, the novel of his coming-of-age.

  Alice, in the meantime, all fired up, wasn't listening and continued to massage him with a precise anti-clockwise movement of the wrist. However, to her great surprise, this wasn't getting the desired result in the least. His dick was literally shrivelling up in her hand. She looked at him, embarrassed. The writer was floored. ‘What's happening? Is he coming here?’

  ‘Please . . . Just a moment. Be quiet for just a moment.’

  Alice heard a broken note in Fabrizio's voice. She dropped his flaccid appendage and started listening.

  ‘Anyway, he's not going anywhere! Where could he go? No other publishing house is prepared to give him as much as we do. Not even half. Who does he think he is? Grisham? And what's more, I've heard that his show hasn't been confirmed for next year either. If they shut it down, Ciba will sink like a rock. We have to get him to lower his crest. In fact, next week, Achille, I want to meet with Modica and Malagò so we can work out how to proceed . . . He hasn't got another book in him. He's washed up.’ A moment of silence. ‘Ahhh!! I've finished. I'd been holding it in since the plane.’ Then the sound of footsteps on the gravel.

  Ciba was floating half off the ground, unable to react. Then he plummeted down, into the mud of planet earth, or better, onto the woman whose vagina he had his middle finger immersed in. A woman whom, what's more, he had only just met. And who worked in the same field as him. A stranger. A potential spy.