The Night of Rome Read online

  The Investigation, they’d headline it. More modestly, a shovelful of shit, he thought, opening the layout again.

  Shadows on the Jubilee

  We reveal the secret that will nail the mayor and the suicide that’s making the Vatican tremble.

  ROME—You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. You can live in the secrecy of a lie, but only until the truth comes knocking on your door. Because facts are like stones, heavy and durable . . .

  Oh yeah, it really was a spectacular lede.

  Il Meridiano, after weeks of work and careful verification of sources who, for understandable considerations, asked to remain unnamed for their own protection . . .

  Of course, a little lunch, a file folder with a few old clippings, an hour or so copying and pasting from Malgradi’s bowl of stew, and the fear is gone.

  . . . is able to document that the mayor of Rome, Martin Giardino, has for years been pursued by a terrible secret. A secret that has to do with a young, English, female student, M.A., abused on a rainy night more than twenty years ago in the dorms of Oxford University, where at the time a young professor from Alto Adige was teaching . . .

  He was particularly impressed with the invention of the fictional M.A.

  . . . In a small house in Manchester, where she livestoday, M.A. tells Il Meridiano: “I’ll never be able to forget him, that man, my professor. He invited me to his room with the excuse that he wanted to give me back a paper of mine that he’d corrected. But as soon as the door shut behind us . . . As soon as . . . ” M.A. bursts into uncontrollable sobs. She shakes her head. “So, yes, anyway . . . ”

  Manchester of all places! He’d only been to Manchester once, that time that A.S. Roma under Spalletti had taken seven shellackings from the English, and he’d wondered whether it might not be wise to choose a city that was less unlucky. Still, if Malgradi said Manchester, then Manchester it would be, and in any case the script worked well enough, so on he read.

  “ . . . He raped me violently. As horny as a monkey . . . ”

  Just why Malgradi had insisted on inserting this detail of the monkey wasn’t entirely clear to him. Still, no doubt about it, this detail fit in perfectly. Even though it reminded him of something. Could it perhaps have been the mess that fat French banker got himself into . . . What the fuck was his name again . . . ? Oh, right, Strauss something . . . Strauss-Kahn . . . He’d thrown himself at the housekeeper in a New York hotel and what was it she’d said? She’d actually said he’d behaved like “a horny monkey.” Okay, if Malgradi’s happy, everyone’s happy.

  The name of that Italian professor was Martin Giardino. And on that long-ago night, twenty years ago, he’d thrown away his career, which had been a promising one, with the tacit cooperation of the prestigious English university. He agreed to leave England and the world of academia. For good. Oxford would remain silent. M.A. was never made whole for her suffering. In the past twenty years, Martin Giardino had never once had the courage to ask her forgiveness. Today, this man is the mayor of Rome. This is the man of the “moral turning point.” Moral, how? Him? Moral?

  What a cold son of a bitch. Spartaco caught himself actually believing what he’d written and just reread. That was proof that it worked. It worked, and how.

  He clicked the mouse to scroll to the next page. Here was the main dish.

  Martin Giardino’s unconfessable secret is not the only long shadow cast upon the jubilee. Reliable Vatican sources tell Il Meridiano that on the evening of last March 13th, the very same day that the Holy Year was announced, a young priest, Don Paolo Micci, took his own life by jumping off one of the high towers of the Vatican walls. The news was kept out of the press and is still shielded by top secrecy. For two excellent reasons. The first: the young priest’s sexual predilections. The second: his, shall we say, less than transparent relations with Bishop Giovanni Daré, the prelate appointed by the Holy Father as the guarantor of public works for the jubilee . . .

  Nothing of the sort would ever have come out in the days of Monsignor Tempesta: homosexuality in the cassock was a taboo subject, and you can believe it, considering how they were all asshole buddies. But now, instead, that the magical partnership of bygone days had been buried by Malgradi, always a slave to his dick, at least now it was possible to beat up some faggots again, which is always a good and just thing. The fireworks about homosexuality were decisive. And it pointed to the obvious next step: the conclusion of the piece.

  How can we hand over the keys to the jubilee to a mayor who’s a rapist, at once lascivious and a liar, and with him, a bishop subject to sexual extortion?

  Spartaco’s smartphone vibrated. He looked at the display. It was Malgradi.

  “Yep. I’m done . . . Yes, five pages. No, no . . . I didn’t add anything of my own. The usual copy and paste. I’ll send it straight over by email. After all, you can talk to the editor in chief yourself. Sure, it’s going into the next issue. Thursday. It’s a bombshell. An authentic bombshell.”

  CAPITOLINE HILL. TAPROOM IN THE COUNCIL HALL.

  The fact that that hack Liberati had actually done the job he’d been sent to do gave Malgradi an appetite. So he hurried down to the buvette, or little taproom, in the Giulio Cesare Hall. He took a small plate and piled it high with egg-and-salami tea sandwiches, grabbed a bowl of peanuts from the counter, and ordered a Campari Orange. Then he took a seat on one of the stools on the open-air veranda, where he ran right into that bitch Alice Savelli.

  That’s right, the little girl who’d thrown the first stone against his brother Pericle had come a long way. First of all, she’d discarded the carabiniere she’d taken to bed—too old and too down-market, that Marco Malatesta, for a bourgeois snob like her—and then she’d become a young leader in the Five Star movement, founded by Beppe Grillo. When Grillo was a comedian, he wasn’t bad, and he’d then gone on to garner a substantial following and plenty of votes under a banner that might as well have just had one phrase emblazoned on it: Fuck off! As far as that sentiment went, Malgradi couldn’t agree more. The cunning professional politicians had quickly isolated the legion of Five Star parliamentarians, who in point of fact had been neutralized in their persistent resentments. Still, if needed, mused Temistocle, they could lend a hand. As for Savelli, who’d been chosen by an online primary—now there was some bullshit that a few thousand digital party activists had participated in—she’d been elected to the city council and then appointed contingent leader. And in that position she’d become a hardline pasionaria whose recurring response was “No.” Whatever the question, the answer is always “No.”

  Naturally, the surname Malgradi had made him her obsessive target. And he didn’t mind that one bit because, as deputy mayor, the attacks of that young girl had given him a notable profile.

  “Good afternoon, councilwoman,” said Malgradi, sketching out a sarcastic bow.

  “Good afternoon, but not for long, Deputy Mayor.”

  “Why don’t you smile every now and then, Alice?”

  Malgradi had always addressed her by her first name, and with the informal “tu,” knowing that it drove her crazy.

  “I was informing you of a piece of news, Deputy Mayor. But I see that it went by you.”

  “Now, it didn’t go by me, Alice. I got it. I saw it, and I saw the umpteenth no-confidence motion that you’ve lodged against the mayor and the coalition government. Which means, also against yours truly. If you don’t mind my saying so, it strikes me as the usual tripe.”

  “Wait, do you call ‘the usual tripe’ the housing disaster, the shame of city cops who don’t even show up for work, the revolt against the welcome centers for immigrants on the outskirts of town that your mayor doesn’t even know where they are, the fraud of the cloned public transportation tickets, and three, I say three quarters—Esquilino, Monti, San
Giovanni—that have completely collapsed after the brilliant idea of closing off to traffic an archeological dig that’ll be finished God only knows when and how.”

  “You know what I like about you, Alice? That you never get tired of the sound of your own voice.”

  “Instead I’m happy to know that I’ve always detested everything about you and your family. Just consider, I even think you’re worse than your brother.”

  “Are you interested in insulting me or talking about politics?”

  “Excuse me, but what on earth would we talk about?”

  “About what you want to achieve with your motion.”

  “That seems obvious. The resignation of the mayor and his coalition.”

  “Have you studied up on the regulations, beautiful? Do you know that the mayor elected by the populace can’t be ejected with a vote taken by the city council? You know, don’t you, that there can only be a constructive vote of no confidence? Which means you need to have a positive majority for a prospective successor. And with you there, who the fuck is going to govern?”

  “So what? Of course we know that. Ours is a political gesture.”

  “There you go, nice work, you see that when you apply yourself . . . and I’m thinking politically. A motion against the mayor and against the coalition government is something you’ll vote for alone. While instead a motion against the mayor alone might garner surprising numbers of votes . . . ”

  Alice stared at the old shark. What the hell was he talking about? Why should they evaluate differently the responsibilities of the German and those of his magical circle? Malgradi foresaw the question. His tone of voice turned silky and conniving.

  “To bring home a political result, my young friend.”

  He patiently explained to her that in the last few months a fissure had opened between the majority and the mayor. Martin Giardino was detested by a great many members of his own party. The man was capable of being arrogant and intolerable when he set himelf to it. His inability to make decisions was legendary, and when he finally set his signature to a document, well, if things went well, all credit to him, but if they didn’t, then he put the blame on “old-style politics.”

  “Therefore, you accuse the mayor of being more or less like the rest of you,” Alice jumped in, treacherously.

  Malgradi pretended he hadn’t heard. And he went on. The straw that had broken the camel’s back: appointing that old jalopy Polimeni to oversee the contracts for the jubilee.

  “Seriously, no one in Rome can take another minute of the German. We least of all.”

  “And therefore?”

  “And therefore a motion of no confidence in the mayor, and the mayor alone, is likely to pass, and anyway, even if it doesn’t pass, it carries with it a sizable chunk of votes, a lot more votes than you have. It’ll be a nice fat slap in the face for the German. He won’t be able to ignore it. At the very least, it’ll trigger a political crisis. Maybe he’ll resign, or we’ll block his budget, or something—we’ll see. In the meantime, you’d be the stars of the show. For once, instead of standing at the window spitting down on the rest of the universe, you’d be doing the right thing. And it would be a nice big political success.”

  Your people. Our people. A political success. Alice heaved a sigh of annoyance. The reason she’d gone into politics had been to change things. That’s why she’d abandoned the old, compromised left wing and had launched herself with such enthusiasm into the movement. And now this old bandit wanted to drag her once again into the swamp.

  “Your little games are of no interest to us,” she retorted contemptuously.

  Malgradi laughed and tried to touch the back of Alice’s neck; she recoiled in disgust.

  “Grow up, girlie.”

  Malgradi stood up brusquely from the stool on the taproom veranda and, turning his back to Alice, headed off toward the Giulio Cesare Hall. Then he stopped and, with well-rehearsed theatricality, came back to look at her and take one last turn onstage.

  “Remember, my dear young revolutionary, that ours is a big party with a thousand different souls. And also remember that politics is the art of the unpredictable. In any case, I’ve made a request and I expect an answer. It seems to me that you’re going to have to inform the movement. Just think if a little birdie were to whisper to your gurus that you did everything on your own, that you dismissed an opportunity without consulting your base. At the very least, they’d put you on trial, the way you all like to do so much, on live streaming, and then they’d kick you out of the party. So let me know, eh, sweetheart?”

  FIVE STAR ADVISORY COUNCIL. FRIDAY THE 27TH. EVENING.

  She hated to admit it, but the obscene Malgradi had told her things and pointed out aspects of the matter that had forced her to give it thought. The offer itself was repulsive, but the rules of the movement were imperative. Therefore, Alice informed the other council members in the party group, and then reached out, as required by statute, to the movement’s online base. All the same, in the context of submitting to an electronic referendum the proposal for a new and different no-confidence motion, this time against Giardino alone, she wrote that the shift in strategy was a product of the “possible convergence of intent among DP dissidents allied with Deputy Mayor Malgradi.” That’s right, she had written those exact words: “DP dissidents allied with Malgradi.” Because by so doing—she had told herself—if that snake in the grass had set a trap for her, he would be its first victim.

  She set a deadline for online voting of 10 PM. Three thousand votes came in. The “yes” votes were eighty percent.

  Alice accepted the “virtual” verdict without too much enthusiasm. Maybe Malgradi had had a point when he called that type of electoral consultation “pure bullshit.” And she also tried to figure out whether behind all those “yeses” and the hashtags that expressed them there might not be hidden the DP activists who were guided by Malgradi. A pointless question, she concluded after spending a fair amount of time contemplating the lights that lit up the night over Piazza Venezia.

  Before leaving the office, she turned to her secretary.

  “Stefania, I know it’s late, but if you don’t mind very much I wonder if I can ask you to draw up the new text of the motion for a no-confidence vote against Giardino alone. We need to get the support of at least nineteen council members, and we don’t have a lot of time if we’re going to try to get a vote on it inside a week. Good night.”

  “Certainly. Good night,” the young woman replied, with a smile.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 28TH. HOME OF MARTIN GIARDINO.

  In theory, a bad case of pharyngitis constituted an excellent excuse to take a break. But Martin Giardino detested taking breaks. He’d spend the last day of his convalescence coordinating everything that could be coordinated by telephone and email, and the next morning, let the world collapse, he’d still get back to the office. In the meantime, with the aid of a linden flower herbal tea, he was trying to get some sleep, distractedly channel hopping, when he ran into Chiara Visone. A big old commercial. It must have been a recording of an old interview that they’d dug out of the files. Chiara was smiling, inspired and perky, as she fielded the questions of an aging hack, one of those journalists who make it a point of honor never to put their interviewees in a corner. Especially not if they’re powerful and clearly up and coming.

  “Look, I have to make a confession. Youth is, for me, an absolutely required condition. A sine qua non. Just understand that anyone who was born before the World Cup in Spain is stuff from the last century. The lord only knows, it’s my own problem. That’s right, a problem afflicting us millennials, echo boomers, Generation Y, I don’t know, you take your pick.”

  Martin Giardino angrily punched the “off” button. Young people against old people, the new against the ancient. He couldn’t stand hearing that trite old refrain again. What’s so bad about memory? What’s so bad about Hi
story? Aren’t you always and inevitably building on the shoulders of those who went before you? What the hell. The World Cup in Spain. Sandro Pertini. When that had happened, Martin was twenty-seven years old, the Communists were a strange land to him, and he was studying like a dog to make something of himself, he was on the verge of trying to see what would come of an adventure in Brazil. And, most important of all, that young woman hadn’t even been born yet. The truth is that Chiara Visone pained Martin. The memory of their first meeting still stung. A handshake in City Hall and that ferocious wisecrack.

  “You know, I thought you were younger, Mr. Mayor.”

  “I’m not sixty yet,” he had reacted, instinctively.

  “Maybe it’s the beard that ages you. You should shave it.”

  The old. The young. Enough, for God’s sake.

  He finished savoring his herbal tea, lukewarm by now, and welcomed, with something approaching a sense of relief, the ring of his cell phone. There was still work to do, evidently. Thank God, there was still work to do.

  “Martin Giardino here.”

  It was the secretary of the Left-Wing Ecology and Freedom Club of Testaccio, Enzo Rendina. A good guy who had wound up changing his mind about the German. Whether that was as a result of the piazza restored to the quarter or for some other reason, who could say. The important thing was that he had certainly changed it.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, if I call you so late on your cell phone, but I just learned something a little while ago that I found stunning and upsetting, and that I thought I should tell you immediately, because it’s important . . . ”