The little ball was beginning to roll down the slope. My relationship with Maria was becoming more and more claustrophobic, like the sixteen year old mother’s dress that gets shorter and shorter in 4th March 1943 by Lucio Dalla, God have mercy on his soul. We had been together for two years now and most of my friends would have wagered that it wouldn’t last longer than two months – they believed that I was unable to settle down with a woman.
Sometimes I paused, during the few solitary moments that I had left, to try to understand what had changed recently. It was a useless exercise – I never found an answer. Then, I came up with the only possible reason – I was the one who’d changed. A book by Stephen King that I had been reading for a few weeks during that spring inspired me to see things more clearly. The book was about a man who travelled back in time to save Kennedy from being assassinated. Each time that the character changed the past, something would oppose him, as if the future didn’t want to be altered. During those days, I felt like something within me had started rebelling, I was trying to avoid becoming somebody that I didn’t want to be.
To make things even more complicated, Valentino, Maria’s uncle, began to behave like a hormone driven teenager. He had fallen, head over heels, for a man a lot younger than him. The guy was a forty five year old from Palermo and there was something about him that didn’t seem quite right. His first name wasn’t convincing. Everybody called him Pierre but I was pretty sure that his real name was Pietro, if not something completely different. I wasn’t bothered by his excessive femininity and his brightly dyed hair; by his tendency to talk too much about trivia or his rough ignorance – which was sometimes enjoyable, as it made him say funny phrases like ‘I have a diagonal ulcer’ – or the constant and persistent onion smell that lingered on him. There was something else that bothered me about the man I happened to share some weekends with in Castelferro and who occasionally accompanied Maria’s uncle when he visited us at my house. First of all, Pierre had never made it clear what it was he did for a living. My mother had always taught me to be wary of men who hide what they do for a living, it didn’t matter if they had an empty wallet or if they lit their cigars with fifty pound notes. As a second point, I believed that Pierre had a somewhat negative influence on Maria’s uncle. It was like Pierre held him under his thumb, like a femme fatale who slow-cooked rich old men only to leave after they’ve sucked them dry, and not in a sexual way either. I just didn’t like him. I’m not saying it now that I know what happened – that would be ‘too easy, too simple, too comfortable’, as my brother Roberto likes to say, quoting Saro Urzì’s theatre show Sedotta e Abbandonata. I mentioned to Maria that I had a problem with him, but she disagreed and was clearly annoyed by my antipathy. She accused me of being homophobic.
“Uncle Valentino looks very happy with him. They’re a gorgeous couple – try to overcome your prejudice.”
“Prejudice? I don’t like him, I don’t have prejudice.”
“You just can’t accept that his sexuality is different to yours.”
“Bullshit, Maria. Don’t be a blue dick.”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
I meant that Maria was behaving like one of those feminist writers who spout bullshit all day and, when somebody points it out, they cry misogyny and sexual discrimination. Just like the Spaghetti House kidnappers, who kidnapped some Italian waiters in London. One of the waiters called the kidnapper a dick and the kidnappers then called the waiter racist. The waiter then replied with one of the best quotes from the film: ‘you’re not a dick because you’re black. You’re a dick because you’re a dick. If you were blue, you’d be a blue dick.’
That is exactly what I meant, but I didn’t explain it to Maria, I didn’t want to have a fight. I was tired of useless words and, in all honesty, I didn’t give a fuck about Pierre or Pietro, Totuccio or whatever his real name was.
“Alright, I’m sorry, let’s leave it. I still don’t like him, though. One day you’ll tell me I was right,” I answered. I had no idea how right I was.
*
I was getting increasingly more nervous and irritable. The editorial office was one of the causes of my bad mood. The infamous international crisis had hit our little office and the editorial manager had used this as an excuse to get rid of a lot of people. An awful lot. A few of my co-workers were engaged in bitter court battles against the firing – a handful of people (who in all honesty were about as skilled as a fat elephant in an office) were sent home with an early retirement pension. We lost seven co-workers in seven months. Those who had gone home said goodbye to their colleagues with the happiness of those who had jumped on the last life boat, while the remaining unfortunates waited on the sinking ship, saying their prayers.
The office was empty. It still looked like a zoo, but it was a zoo in which mad cow disease, swine flu or another fatal virus had killed most of the animals. Those remaining were all sick and malnourished. The workload had increased tenfold – I was beginning to feel like a slave. Nobody talked to one another any more. We just typed our day away under the bright white office lights. It reminded me of a psychiatric hospital, and we waited impatiently for the days to end. It had been tough saying goodbye to some of my co-workers. Before I met Maria, observing Totò Favuzza fall asleep on his keyboard every day at fifteen thirty had been one of the few certainties of my life. Or the catatonic look on the face of Franco, the editorial secretary, who stared at the news channel on his computer, flicking endlessly between one paper and another. Those were good memories but it was miserable now. Pippo Nocera liked to engage in nostalgic conversations with me every now and again about our ex co-workers – it made me feel like a war veteran, or an old pensioner who looks back at their life with nostalgia.
Because of the staff cuts, one of our co-workers, Corrado Palma, was promoted, which left just two of us in the office. A young lad in his early thirties, Vittorio Spampinato, made his appearance in the office to help us out. Spampinato was one of those stubborn dickheads that really got under my skin. It wasn’t simply because he was arrogant – I guess I’ve always been arrogant myself – it was because his arrogance was rooted in a complete human and professional vacuum. He got the job thanks to some relatives of his who knew the manager, despite there being a long list of other skilled applicants. These applicants had years of experience and had been called into the office occasionally to help out during busy periods – they obviously deserved the job far more than Spampinato, but Tucci had conveniently forgotten about all these people and their experience. Spampinato was a wolf and he had quickly won over the manager, gaining favours; equally quickly, he became the focus of daily rants from his colleagues. His eighties pop star blonde hairstyle, his blue eyes and his slurred way of speaking – everything about him repelled people.
This young man caused the chain of unfortunate events that occurred that spring. Or at least that’s what I like to think. In reality, my frustration triggered everything – that’s what I mean when I say that I want to be completely honest. The young man busted his ass in the office. Pippo and I were tired and not motivated and he gladly took on some of our work. He showed great initiative and had good connections for the news. Initially I let him work in peace; one day, however, probably because I was bored, I decided to tease him.
I began to play tennis with him. The young lad felt like he was the son of Roger Federer and Serena Williams. I invited him for a match on a Sunday morning. I let him lead for a while and he liked it, then I began to play seriously and I kicked his ass. When I got home I felt as satisfied as a thirteen year old who’d just fucked for the first time.
‘That’s just the beginning,’ said the naughty teenager that dwelled in my empty skull. I’d noticed that a beautiful secretary, Gloria Benincasa, was always around Spampinato, giving him clearly flirtatious looks. It had been a while since I had flirted with a woman, but I still remembered the basics of the playboy role well. I set my eyes on that girl – a twenty-five year old student of journalism with hazel eyes and little knowledge of grammar. My mission was to distract her from the blonde Vittorio in less than forty-eight hours. He had acknowledged my defeat very politely when we had played tennis, but this time the defeat would be tougher to acknowledge. The naughty kid inside my skull had a good laugh. The only problem was getting rid of the young girl without giving Maria reason to be suspicious. A drink with her seemed enough – I explained to her that my old player times were over and that I had found love. I knew very well that this approach would dampen her desire, but I didn’t mind that much – I had noticed her small breasts and that she had started to put on some weight.
“It’s difficult to find someone as well behaved as you,” she squeaked, as she sipped on her cocktail.
“There are some good guys around, even in our field. Vittorio Spampinato for example…”
It seemed to me that she blushed. She put down her drink, pulled a perplexed face and said exactly what I wanted her to say: “He’s a little too desperate for me. I mean, he’s not married and he doesn’t have a girlfriend, so I guess that’s okay… but he’s not my type. He’s a kid. I like men, like you.”
“He’s desperate for you? Really? I thought—”
“What?”
“Nothing, rumours… There are a lot of rumours in our job, don’t trust anyone.”
“Why?”
“I heard Vittorio was gay.”
Gloria opened her eyes wide – they were beautiful, I must admit.
“No way!”
“I’m not saying anything, it’s just something I’ve heard. I’m not saying I believe it. To be honest I don’t even care. I mean, it’s his business, right?”
“Now that you mention it, though… I’m thinking about some of the things he said. Wow, I’m so slow at reading people.”
“Let’s change topic – I’m not one of those who likes spreading rumours about his co-workers.”
“You’re a little angel, Corsaro,” she commented, as she stroked my hand.
The naughty kid inside me was giggling with joy.
*
Once I was done with Vittorio’s personal life, I shifted my attention to his job – I wanted to erase his successful career. I knew how to write with my left hand and I used to spend a lot of my time playing Tetris and using social network websites – I used these skills to my advantage in my mission. I began to enjoy it. I sneaked some fake pieces of news into his pile – a fight at a hospital between two alleged fathers of the same baby; a gentlemen thief who offered to help ladies carry their grocery bags to their doorstep and, once there, would force them to hand over their jewellery and cash; a turning point in the investigation of the murder of a young Moldavian prostitute, which had been forgotten for a long time. I stamped on the accelerator until I crashed into a wall.
A few weeks ago, Nicola Galanti wrote a story about compensation for the unfair prosecution of a gentleman named Onofrio Palillo, a fifty year old man born in Agrigento but raised in Palermo. He had been at the centre of a calamitous judicial error and had been accused of homicide. Two men killed a petrol pump attendant during a robbery – not a typical occurrence in Sicily. Unluckily, Palillo owned a car that was similar to that of the robbers. According to the only eye witness, Concetta Sferlazzo, who was eighty years old and had cataracts, Palillo looked like one of them – ‘the guy with the gun’. Palillo spent six months in jail, until they ascertained that he was innocent, despite it being fairly straightforward to verify. The ballistics report showed that the man who fired the shot was at least twenty-five centimetres taller than Palillo; additionally, a couple of witnesses affirmed that they saw him somewhere else, outside the city, during the time the robbery took place. The real robbers were never found.
Even though it had been important, the paper had mistakenly run the story twice, which showed how disorganized Corrado Palma was at managing the articles we wrote. I thought about this piece of news, and realised that there was the possibility of an interesting interview. Ivan Bosco, the head of the office, would appreciate my initiative. Tucci would like it even more. In my newspaper, magistrates rarely had the whole scene to themselves. Writing about such a shameful event within the public prosecutor’s office in Palermo would have displeased the staff and everyone else who was in charge of public affairs. I didn’t have a specific opinion on the event. I have a lot of respect for scrupulous, highly skilled magistrates, who rid our streets of people from the Mafia and other gentlemen, in the name of the law. I also know magistrates who are obscenely ignorant, lazy or, even worse, full of themselves. This is how it works in any job in the world. A magistrate that is under the illusion that the same thing won’t happen again is either a blatant hypocrite or a total idiot. In my opinion, at least eighty per cent of the entire human race belongs in either of these two categories. In other words, I really didn’t care about the political discussion in favour of, or against, the public prosecutor’s office. I just wanted to write a good article – that was my job.
I decided to contact the lawyer, Mr Troja. For me, that was the beginning of a long downhill slide.