Apart from occasional breaches of traffic regulations and two or three joyrides on the Zürich public transport system, Zündel had never yet perpetrated any serious infraction of the law. So much the bolder he now seemed to himself, stalking through the streets early on Friday evening, resolved to take the plunge. It was time to get the revolver. What good to him was the venerable carbine in the cupboard at home which he never touched except when he had to? No, what he needed now was a handgun, and preferably a revolver, a plain little common-or-garden revolver. – A pistol wasn’t quite the thing. Pistols have magazines, and ever since recruit school, Zündel hadn’t got along with magazines. (On the second or third day the new recruits had been drilled in the use of the assault rifle – in particular the fitting of the magazine – and of the whole company there were only two recruits, who – instructed by a despairing lieutenant – lay there in the barracks corridor until far at night practicing, incapable, apparently, of mastering the simple knack: namely Zündel and a blatant cretin by the name of Bölsterli, who was allowed to go home after a week.)
A revolver, then. According to the dictionary, una revoltella. – Una revoltella con cinquanta colpi. With fifty bullets.
The fellow who had just hissed “Hashish!” in Zündel’s ear is the right sort: strong jawline, unshaven, flashing eyes – a proper hoodlum.
Zündel stops and says quietly but firmly: Una revoltella.
The fellow doesn’t bat an eyelid, just whispers: Follow me, but keep a distance.
He steers Zündel into one of the many little lanes connecting the Via di Prè with the Via Gramsci, the harbor road, none of them much wider than four feet or so.
Zündel pays careful attention: the name of the little lane is Vico dell’Amore, and at the bottom end of it, shortly before it joins the harbor road, there’s a public convenience. The man draws up, stands there feet apart, pretending. He nods to Zündel to come nearer. Zündel stands next to him, and he too pretends to pee.
The fellow says: Name’s Carlo, you can trust me. Up ahead on the harbor road, a couple of hundred yards, left-hand side, you’ll find a gun shop. You go ahead, look the display, I remain in sight.
Zündel thinks these precautions are a bit overdone, but it is Carlo, and not himself who is the expert in criminal etiquette.
So he sets off, and thinks of Serafino, with whom he strolled here arm in arm.
The first prostitutes are already leaning against house fronts and parked cars.
Here is the gun shop.
He glances at the models in the window display and in spite of the variety on offer, he quickly plumps for a neat, silver revolver, a 38 special, with brown wooden inlays in the handle.
He motions to Carlo who is standing some twenty yards away in conversation with someone. Carlo strolls up and says half-loud: OK, quick! Which one you want? – At the back on the right, 38 special, 200,000 lire, con cinquanta colpi, whispers Zündel. – All right, says Carlo, now my colleague take you to a safe place. I get gun you want and come in half hour. OK?
The other man, his colleague, looks even shadier than Carlo. Zündel isn’t happy about being in the care of two criminals. But he trots along at a little distance behind his new guide.
Again, they dive into little alleyways, reach the Via di Prè, follow it down a little way, then turn right into a lane full of garbage, which before terminating in the lively Via Balbi spreads out into a little square.
There they wait.
There is no conversation.
They smoke.
Way up, on a clothesline hanging across the piazza a few items of laundry hang motionlessly.
I don’t stand a chance, thinks Zündel. One of them grabs me, and the other takes my money off me, and if I resist at all, they beat me to death. I can’t bale out of it either – of course, that’s why Carlo gave me this guard. Christ, what a bloody beginner I am, walking into this trap. Death with dignity – that’s what it was about. But to perish miserably in some shitty Genoese alleyway, I really didn’t deserve that!
It starts getting dark.
His guard is humming to himself innocently.
Finally, Carlo turns up, the parcel with weapon and rounds under his arm. The box is wrapped in brown packing paper, and tied with string, more than once.
Zündel is ashamed of his suspicion.
The accomplice is detailed to stand at the bottom of the lane and keep a look out over Via Balbi.
Then Carlo says: 200,000 and 50,000 for the risk. The bullets – no charge. OK?
Zündel stares in horror at Carlo’s left hand: he is missing an index finger, the stump is taped up with a soiled plaster.
No agree? asks Carlo.
Yes, of course, 250,000, OK, OK! says Zündel and reaches for his wallet. Then he hesitates. And says: Don’t get me wrong, but perhaps I could look at it before I pay?
Carlo reaches out, thumps Zündel heartily on the back, holds out the parcel to him, and says: Bravo, I see you understand the bees’ knees! Do you see the bar across the road, next to the cartoleria? Go in, and go through the swing doors at the back, and on the right you see a small WC. There you open the package in peace. You pay afterward, I wait here.
Zündel takes a few steps toward the Via Balbi, and looks uncertainly at the road. He thinks: the fact that Carlo has encouraged me to check means that my checking is actually unnecessary, and the fact that he lets me go without asking for his money upfront proves that even in the so-called criminal underworld there is still such a thing as personal trust.
So he turns and goes back to Carlo and says with a twinkle: Oh, I expect you’ve got me the right one!
He thanks Carlo for his engagement with a shake of the hand and counts twenty-five banknotes into the three-fingered hand.
Carlo whistles up his accomplice.
The two of them natter incomprehensibly.
The accomplice disappears up the lane, Carlo thumps Zündel on the back once more, and invites him to have a drink.
Zündel is anxious to get back to his room, and Carlo’s presence makes him feel somehow at risk, but he doesn’t want to be unfriendly.
Very well, the Pippo Bar is nearby, they drink a Cynar together, the parcel remains wedged under Zündel’s arm, they chat, Carlo praises Zündel’s Italian, and he’s just an all-round nice guy. At the finish, he warns him off the other black marketeers, there were some pretty insalubrious types among them.
Carlo offers to pay, but Zündel says decisively: No, no, I’m paying, this is my treat, you’ve done me a great service after all.
Outside he shakes Carlo’s hoodlum paw once more, thanks him again, and then he walks more cheerfully than for weeks to his albergo.
He really felt he was on his way to a date, that’s how flushed his cheeks were, how expectantly his pulse was beating. In addition there was his satisfaction at having safely mastered a not everyday set of challenges. Everything had gone so well, when it could so easily have gone wrong!
He locked the door.
He laid the parcel on the bed and straightaway sawed through the string with his penknife. Then he undid the packing paper, saw that the box was further wrapped in some sheets of newspaper, removed those, unpeeled four strips of masking tape that were laid round the box, and – with a feeling of tenderness that surprised him – lifted the lid. There, on a bed of green wood wool, lay a chunk of plaster of Paris. White and ceremonial.
Zündel clasped his bottom with both hands. Only great self-control kept him from wailing at the top of his voice. He stamped three times and ground his teeth. Then he slumped down on to the bed next to the box, and said, aloud: What a moron I am! – Still more loudly he said: I’m the most feeble-witted asshole in the world. I’ve had enough. I’m not just naïve and unworldly, I am plainly and simply a bloody imbecile.
He took the shapeless and heavy lump of plaster in his hand, looked at it and murmured: I see, a .38 special, I see.
Then, just to be sure, he reached into the wood-wool, just exactly like a still dissatisfied child will reach into its Easter egg nest, to see if there might not be a little extra surprise. But all he found was an empty cartridge.
He managed a polite laugh.
For a long time he sat on the bed.
His rage and disappointment gradually abated, shame was more obdurate.
By half past ten there was nothing in him but cold indifference and a little sorrow that he was unable to see any humor in his experience.
My sense of humor has gone, he thought. Hunger has left me, humor has left me, my wife has left me, the Colt never even came. In my mouth I’ve got a chunky provisional tooth, on my face a potato nose, and in my heel a sea-urchin prong slowly going septic. Meanwhile, not far away, a couple of gangsters are sitting eating and drinking and cracking up about the klutz they’ve milked. Such is life. Today’s Friday. Tomorrow’s Saturday. The day after tomorrow I won’t be going to Tripoli, I’m going home, because the holiday is over, and I am what I was and always will be, which is to say a dutiful and submissive individual.