Nicolas meant to live his life on the run with his head held high. Ten days, a month, a year, ten years. He’d never been to Nisida Reform School, just as he’d never been behind bars at Poggioreale, but now he found himself where a crime boss sooner or later is bound to wind up. That’s why, even while he was still fleeing the police, he’d put in a call to ’o Cicognone with excitement throbbing in his voice, an excitement that had then been transformed into feverish expectation when he’d seen ’o Cicognone waiting with pick and mortar in Ponticelli, outside the walled-up apartment building where, some time earlier, Stavodicendo, too, had lived out his brief time on the run. But he wasn’t going to make the same mistake, he wasn’t going to let them catch him the minute he set foot back out on the street, he’d sworn to himself while Briato’ and Tucano used the pick to demolish the wall that ’o Cicognone rebuilt, depriving him—brick upon brick—of both light and air. He’d transform that building into a tower from which he could issue commands to the outside world. With discipline. ’O Cicognone himself had assured his personal comfort with a brand-new generator: “This is a gift from L’Arcangelo,” he had told him, and Briato’ had done his part, with a PlayStation.
That very same day, toward evening, he’d received the first message updating him on the outside world. It announced the umpteenth name to cross off: “They arrested Lollipop for the old man’s murder. Nisida Reform School.” The videos of the murder taken in that discotheque that was fairly bristling with online video cameras had already gone viral, according to the handwriting on that scrap of paper. Then they sent him the front pages of the newspapers. For the first time he appeared, with pictures and his full name. All things that gave luster and purpose to his time on the run.
Without Lollipop, now, the ones who remained were Tucano, Briato’, and Drone. There were also still a few Longhairs, and then there were the paranzielli, he knew, the youngsters of the paranza like Susamiello, Risvoltino, and Pachi, hard workers who would do anything to become full-fledged members. Even if they weren’t quite ready yet, as had been clear with Pesce Moscio. They needed to be educated, they had to be brought up to their new responsibilities. It was only natural, Nicolas kept telling himself, living things renew themselves, rejuvenate, and the Piranhas had to belong to kids. The old are put in the world to die, the young to take command, that had always been his imperative. Still, shut up in that cage, he’d been reminded of L’Arcangelo, confined not that far away from the walled-up neighborhood. The truth was that lately Don Vittorio struck him as younger, cockier, but that was only thanks to the “Google strategy,” he knew that … no, in any case, he’d never become his own jailer. He’d never be overwhelmed by the fugitive’s anxiety: you have all the time you need to relive things, and not enough to live.
To keep faith with the promise he’d made, in those four months, Nicolas had stuck to a strict program. Out of bed, breakfasting on the food left over from the day before, then physical exercise. Up and down the stairs of the apartment building, knees high, like a U.S. marine at boot camp. After which, he’d go back to his apartment, wait for the hands from outside to remove a couple of bricks and shove in food (always cold, occasionally a bowl of pasta, mostly sandwiches), and eat a meal, relaxing with the PlayStation as he ate. He’d spend the afternoon playing Grand Theft Auto and penalty kicks between Napoli of the nineties and some other domestic team. When he was sick of games, he’d switch on his Motorola StarTAC and get some work done. He’d issue orders, sending out his digital pizzini—the short notes of a mafioso—like a real old-time boss. Before dinner—another sandwich, washed down with still mineral water—he’d call Letizia. Her belly was growing. She said that she felt ugly as sin. He retorted that she was simply gorgeous. I love you, Nico’. I love you, Leti’.
From the last farewell to his wife to the moment when the generator turned off was exactly fifty-three minutes. Nicolas would start the countdown on his iPhone and begin his exploration: that was the only activity that could keep his mind off the impending night.
The place was a museum. In the apartments he was able to gain access to, abandoned objects glittered with life, with the lives of dozens and dozens of fugitives from the law who had occupied those rooms before Nicolas. Geological stratifications of walled-in criminals on the lam. Porn DVDs, a rifle broken in half, a waterbed, ripped open, that must have offered a taste of luxury in the two hundred square feet of that cell. A whole life, frozen in place, that reminded Nicolas of the lives immortalized forever in Pompeii and Herculaneum. A coffee table with a hand of cards lying on it, left in the middle of a round of solitaire, women’s panties the fugitive must have sniffed until he’d worn out their smell, a painting of the sea, the freedom of water. But the thing that had enchanted him most were the writings scribbled on the walls: the names of children, wives, surrounded by timid hearts, unconfessable feelings revealed on the walls of a man’s cell. One time, Nicolas had found a pencil stub and had sharpened the point by rubbing it against the wall, and then he had written the letter C. Christian or Cristiana, a memory of the past or an announcement of the future, even he couldn’t say. Then he’d hurled the stub against the far wall. He’d get out of there, eventually. When it was five minutes until dark, he’d race back to his apartment and curl up in his bed. Soon the generator would switch off and the nightmare would begin.
Rats. They emerged in the darkness and filled the hollow spaces between walls, scurried along the baseboards, squeaking out those high notes, filthy creatures that they were. At first he had believed that those vibrations and thumps from inside the walls merely indicated a structural weakness, and that had frightened him; he’d ventured out onto the staircases to check it out, and as he climbed one flight of stairs he’d slipped on something soft and slimy at the same time. A rat. That’s how he had discovered them. Nicolas had always hated rats. How many of them he’d shot, how many he’d crushed, he’d even blown one or two of them up. And now they were having their revenge, now that he was defenseless, now that he couldn’t even see them. In that darkness, they seemed to be immaterial, ghostly, a form of torture designed to deprive him of sleep. Even the walls in those nights lost the reality that established the perimeter of his days, and they drew in on him, so that every space became claustrophobic, suffocating.
It was hours before Nicolas managed to get to sleep, and in his dreams, the rats were gnawing right and left, even chewing into his skull. When he reawakened, he checked himself all over for bite marks. After which, he left the night behind him as if he were destined never to return to it, and his last thought was of the stupid mistake he’d made, that bullet he’d fired into the cranium of some random asshole. But the guy had looked at him, he’d stared at him, as if he’d raped him. Those eyes ought to have been lowered: if you let them look at you, then you’ve lost from the outset.
The nights all followed the same terrible script and the days rolled on monotonously, except for the business he needed to handle from there. It wasn’t bad, giving orders from a distance, but he missed his paranza, the admiration of the youngsters, and that sensation of being recognized on the street. He consoled himself with the thought of what his return would be like.
One afternoon, though, Letizia intruded into his solitude.
“My water has broken,” she told him over the phone. She was heading for the hospital with her mother.
Nicolas kept his cool as he did in all emergency situations, and given the distance, it was easier, in that case. He reassured her, then he called Tucano and told him to escort her and stand guard, to make sure that no one got it into their head to do what he’d tried with Dentino’s son.
Then he called Letizia and stayed on the phone with her until the generator turned off.
It was only the next morning that the usual hand that brought him food also stuck an A4 sheet of paper through the hole, printed with a photograph: Letizia and Cristiana were beautiful.
He had the sensation that this new life of his was taking something away from him, that he had lost something that he really would never be able to get back, and for the first time he thought back to the words his father had spoken, at the cemetery.