The Night of Rome Page 19

  “Tell me, what’s it about?”

  “Well, you see, it’s the Five Star Movement.”

  “Yes, I know. They’ve presented a no-confidence motion against the coalition. A piece of foolishness that the chamber will vote on and reject next week, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “No, that’s exactly the point. The Five Star base, two hours ago, voted online for the presentation of a new no-confidence motion. Individual. Against you, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Huh, well I don’t see what that changes, to tell the truth.”

  “In the debate that took place online and in the proposal put out to the base by the group leader, Alice Savelli . . . ”

  “Charming, that young woman. A little rigid, perhaps, but . . . ”

  “Listen to me, Mr. Mayor. I was telling you that Savelli explained to the activists that there was a reason for the change in the motion. The individual no-confidence motion will be supported—I’m reading verbatim here—‘by DP dissidents close to Malgradi.’”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to.”

  “Are you sure of what you’re telling me right now?”

  “Mr. Mayor, I’ve been deep in that blog with a fake hashtag since the day it first went online.”

  “Why? Why would Malgradi vote in favor of a no-confidence motion against me? What political purpose could there be in such a move?”

  “It seems to me that there’s no mistaking the political purpose. To give you a good hard kick in the ass, and then go for a reshuffle of the coalition council, maybe drawing in the Five Star Movement and getting himself the position of mayor. Naturally, in order to do that, it would mean that your party had chosen Malgradi. So, if I may, if I were you I’d wonder not how many votes he has, but how many votes I had.”

  “Thanks, Enzo.”

  “Don’t mention it, Mayor.”

  As Giardino hung up the phone he was in the grip of an uncontainable rage. A rage, however, that was shot through with instinctive fear. He hadn’t spotted Malgradi’s machinations on the horizon. He was isolated from the party and in the party. Perhaps it was true that he was pretty green when it came to the game of politics. What the voters had recognized as a virtue now looked like it might turn into his political grave.

  At this point, sleep was out of the question. Wrapped in an oversized windbreaker and with a silk scarf scrupulously knotted around his neck, he grabbed his bicycle and decided to listen to his instincts.

  He pedaled along the riverfront embarcadero, the Lungotevere, for an indeterminate amount of time. He rode around St. Peter’s, crossed the river, cut down Via del Corso and across Piazza Venezia, veered over toward Corso Rinascimento. Until, shortly before dawn, he found himself in one of those narrow lanes that run close behind Campo de’ Fiori. The regular movement of the pedaling had brought him back to himself but, if anything, had only honed his fury to a sharper cutting edge.

  He leaned the bicycle against the wall right next to a small wooden street door to a three-story building with an ocher yellow plaster front. He pushed a button next to an intercom, unmarked with any name. On the fifth buzz, he heard Malgradi’s sleep-slurred voice.

  “Who the fuck is it?”

  “It’s me, Martin Giardino. Come downstairs.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mr. Mayor, is that really you? Are you all right? Your voice sounds so strange . . . ”

  “I said come downstairs.”

  “Why don’t you come up? We can have a cup of coffee together.”

  “Get down here!”

  The mayor’s voice had veered into a falsetto. Malgradi threw on an overcoat over his pajamas and understood that the moment had come. Giardino lit into him the minute the downstairs door started swinging open.

  “I’m here because I wanted to tell you in person that from now on, I’m withdrawing all party support. You’re out of the coalition government. You’re no longer deputy mayor. And don’t ask me why. You know why.”

  Malgradi stared at him with a look of sheer commiseration.

  “You know, Martin, it was a mistake for me to defend you to the rest of the party. They were right. You’re a self-centered, paranoid asshole. And in any case, let me give you some news. You no longer have a majority in the city council. The Five Star Movement’s motion is going to pass. But not with my votes. With the party’s votes. Because in this city the party is me. You’re done for.”

  Giardino hadn’t taken his eyes off Malgradi’s puffy face for even a second, and he saw all the ferocity expressed by those degenerate features.

  “You’re the one who’s discredited. And you’ll wind up just like your brother,” he said.

  Malgradi withdrew into the doorway.

  “Me, discredited? There’s a ton of shit that’s about to be dumped over your head. If I were you, I wouldn’t be so sure of myself . . . ”

  Giardino looked up at the sky. Day was dawning. He finally felt a sense of profound relief. But as he got back on his bike, he found he couldn’t get that last threat out of his mind.

  “There’s a ton of shit that’s about to be dumped over your head. If I were you, I wouldn’t be so sure of myself . . . ”

  What was about to sweep him away?

  XIII.

  MARCH 29TH

  Saint’s Day: St. Eustace of Luxeuil

  FIUMICINO, CAPITOLINE HILL, AND THE OLD APPIAN WAY.

  Seventeen calls from Martin Giardino and three from party headquarters. All in the space of the past two hours. What the hell had happened? As soon as he deplaned from the Boeing, having survived yet another nightmarish flight, Adriano Polimeni powered up and immediately powered back down his cell phone in un vidiri e svidiri, as his beloved Camilleri would have put it, no sooner seen than ignored. He had absolutely no intention of foregoing a few hours of well-deserved rest before plunging back into the headaches of the capital. In Seoul he had done good work on the city’s behalf. He was traveling with excessive, inexorable rapidity to the threshold of age sixty, and his body was calling for a truce. Not even if the Colosseum burned down was he going to change his plans.

  Still, there are appointments you can’t avoid.

  It’s fate that demands it.

  That morning, for Adriano Polimeni, fate had decided to take on the semblance of an old Roman taxi driver, the kind that has it in for the world at large, and nothing’s ever right in their view. Starting with politicians, and then moving on to women behind the wheel, and inevitably continuing on through the inevitable lists of unions and civil servants. These last two categories are grouped together by a contemptuous and definitive evaluation:

  “All they’re good for is to eat, and they don’t do a thing from morning to nightfall.”

  There’d been a time, faithful to the party line, when he would have willingly engaged in a vigorous exchange with that representative of the bitter mood of the populace. He would have launched into even the harshest of debates and in the end, there were no two ways about it, his dialectical mastery would have prevailed, and the taxi driver would have been brought back into the fold of respect for constitutional values, and so on and so forth. The educational role of the party, they called it back at leadership school. And it wasn’t even his exhaustion that had kept him from standing up to the stream of clichés that the fascistoid taxi driver kept spewing. No. It was his awareness that the “educational role” was based on a set of values which time—and let’s go ahead and call it History—had mercilessly deleted. What was it he was supposed to defend? Who? History can be a pitiless mocker, no doubt about it: and the mockery is twice as cruel if you’re someone who has based his life on the concept of “historical materialism.”

  Then the taxi driver said those words, and Polimeni heard the first alarm bell go off.

  “Excuse me, what did you just say?�
��

  “I said: with all this mess going down in City Hall . . . ”

  “What do you mean by ‘mess?’”

  “So now it looks like the DP wants to get rid of the German.”

  “The DP?”

  “The DP, Dotto’, that’s right. I can’t figure out heads nor tails of it myself, I mean what? first you put him up as mayor and now you give him a kick in the ass right out the door? But anyway, it looks like that’s what’s going on.”

  Adriano Polimeni gave a reluctant farewell to his bathtub and his bed, turned his cell phone back on, and called Martin Giardino.

  “Adriano, at last! You have no idea.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  The mayor’s voice evoked the imagery of a shipwrecked mariner on a sinking dinghy, bailing frantically as sharks circle.

  “There’s been a change in plans,” he told the cabbie, “take me to the Capitoline Hill.”

  The man snickered. He’d recognized his passenger, a well-known face from TV, or at least well-known and on TV until recently. And with malevolent delight, he resumed his litany against the notorious appetites of the parliamentarians.

  Martin Giardino was pacing nervously around his office. Even though it was Sunday, the mayor had not given up his defense of the trenchworks and the garrison. He gave Adriano a hug and gestured for him to sit down. He just couldn’t sit still.

  “I’ve disconnected the telephones. Since this morning they haven’t stopped ringing. I’ve got the newspapers after me, everyone’s assuming I’m going to resign.”

  “What do they say at the Nazareno?”

  “Pardon my French, but they say it’s none of their fucking concern.”

  Polimeni halted the river of words with a brusque gesture and made a couple of quick phone calls. His contacts at the party’s national headquarters, the ones who had reached out to him that morning, confirmed. Officially, the party considered the question to be an internal matter, quibbles among Romans, and strictly local. A rising deputy secretary had released an ambiguous statement: “Giardino shouldn’t worry, he should just go on governing Rome, if he’s capable.”

  “The party of Pontius Pilate,” the mayor commented.

  Polimeni threw his arms wide.

  “Have you heard from Visone? What does she say?”

  Martin Giardino lunged at the desk that had once belonged to Ernesto Nathan, rummaged through a pile of papers, pulled out a sheaf, and handed it to him.

  “She came to see me a couple of hours ago. And she gave me this.”

  Adriano Polimeni read the byline. Spartaco Liberati. Then he read the body text.

  “The dirt machine is working at full function, Martin.”

  “Not a single word, not one word, of what’s written in that article corresponds to the truth. You have to believe me!”

  “There’s no need for you to have a pharyngitis relapse, Martin. If a piece of news is reported by this Liberati, then that automatically means it’s a fake. Does Chiara believe in this hogwash?”

  “Does she believe it? She’s behind all of this. She and that . . . with Malgradi. Do you know what Chiara said to me? She said that if I resign, then this . . . oh, excuse my French, but there are times when you need to say it . . . this piece of shit won’t be published. She gave me a few days to think it over. An ultimatum, you understand? To me. From Visone!”

  “Try to calm down. Have you already made a decision?”

  “Yes . . . no . . . oh God, Adriano, I don’t know what to do. I could hold out, face the no-confidence vote, go down fighting, and I could resign with a public accusation against them, and then run for election with a list of trusted candidates. We could fight this battle together, Adriano, you and I . . . ”

  Tender his resignation, and then take them all on, like a solitary hero, firm in the saddle, with lance in rest. It was in keeping with the character. Martin Giardino – Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza – Polimeni. This was not the way.

  “That’s complete idiocy, Martin.”

  “You think? I believe, though, that Rome . . . ”

  “If you’re about to say that ‘Rome loves me’ or ‘Rome will understand,’ save your breath,” Polimeni interrupted him.

  Martin Giardino stared at him in desolation.

  “So now you too, Adriano . . .

  “Why don’t you throw in, ‘my son,’” Polimeni mocked him sarcastically. “I’m not Brutus and you’re not Caesar, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and listen to me. I’m on your side. But don’t count on Rome. There’s no city on earth as fickle and slippery as this one. Here the great loves and the undying hatreds last as long as it takes to drink an espresso, Martin. In this city, kings, popes, dictators, and emperors have been hoisted high and knocked low in the time it took the breeze to veer. This is a city that kindles a new passion every minute and extinguishes a thousand others just as fast. Rome recognizes you as long as it’s looking up at you from below. Once you step down from that pedestal, then you’re just one more among thousands, and the cry is ‘Next!’”

  “Then you think there’s no hope?”

  “Who ever said that? Just listen to me. Take two days off, three if you need it. You just got over a case of pharyngitis, right? Well, let’s just say that you had a relapse. Have a press release prepared: the mayor returned to the job still convalescent, but he had an unexpected relapse. If it comes to that, your face is scary to look at.”

  “I feel fine.”

  “Get lost. In complete isolation. Turn off all your devices. Disconnect. Speak to no one. Get that fucking bicycle of yours out and go wandering. Explore the backwoods.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “And in the meantime, I’m going to go get some sleep. At a certain age, when you don’t have the physique of a bike racer, sleep is a precious resource. Believe me, I’ll come up with something.”

  All the same, in spite of all his best resolutions, Adriano Polimeni didn’t get a wink of sleep. He had just arrived home when Father Giovanni appeared at his front door.

  “The ways of the Lord are infinite, Adriano.”

  “You known what I say, Giovanni? Pray to Him with all the ardor in your body, Your Lord. Because down here, everything is going sideways.”

  Padre Giovanni chuckled.

  “Yes, I got an advance peek at that hack article by that . . . that hack journalist Spartaco Liberati. And I can tell you that this morning the Holy Father delivered some swift kicks in the ass to two gentlemen who had come in to see him, demanding my head on a pike.”

  “Are you willing to put that in writing? The pope gave several swift kicks in the ass to . . . ”

  “It was a manner of speech.”

  “Giova’, I have no time to spare. I’m tired, in fact, I’m wrecked. And I don’t know which way to turn.”

  Giovanni filled two glasses with whisky and handed one to the senator.

  “You know what they say, give drink to the thirsty.”

  “What is this? A liturgical update? Unless I’m much mistaken, in the Gospel they were talking about water, not whisky.”

  “The Gospel should be interpreted in light of the circumstances, Adriano. Drink, it’ll do you good.”

  Adriano obeyed. A wave of warmth washed over him. Sometimes, alcohol really can be a blessed thing. Giovanni turned suddenly serious.

  “Truly. The ways of the Lord are infinite. So listen to me now. After I froze those well-known IOR accounts, I said to myself that there could be no doubt that the people we don’t want underfoot were bound to open other accounts in other banks somewhere.”

  “Obviously. In order to perform financial operations in Italy, you need to make reference to domestic bank accounts.”

  “Obviously, as you say. But it also occurred to me that those very same gentlemen might have run into a momentary cr
isis of liquidity.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yes, indeed. Now, they might have been crafty enough to diversify, but also foolish enough to bring it all together under one roof, in a single bank. Ours, in fact. And therefore . . . ”

  “And therefore?”

  “And therefore I spread the word among all the other brothers I know who keep an eye on the one thing sinners care most about, their wallets. If you hear a certain name, I told them, if you notice anything funny, anything at all, even the most trifling detail, report back to me. I’ll be able to make good use of it.”

  “So what happened?”

  So what happened. As chance would have it, or perhaps he should say, the Lord in His infinite mercy, Giovanni explained, had seen to it that the commander of the customs police at Fiumicino Airport was related to a member of the confraternity, a priest from the Ciociaria, absolutely devoted . . .

  “ . . . to the way of justice, to the way of the light, I don’t know if I make myself clear, Adriano.”

  “Clear as glass, clear as day.”

  “Take a look at this official report.”

  Giovanni handed him a skimpy Xerox punctuated with all sorts of inked office stamps. Adriano Polimeni read it and reread it. “As the result of an anonymous tip, Sebastiano Laurenti, businessman, whose identity is more fully documented below, is suspected of the attempted smuggling of a massive quantity of cash without proper documentation . . . ”

  Laurenti. Polimeni suddenly regained his mental clarity. That text in dense bureaucratic language was invaluable. Laurenti. Well, well, well.

  “But what it says here is that the investigation came up empty-handed.”

  “He must have found some other way of getting the swag into the country.”

  “The swag . . . do you hear the way you’re talking, Your Excellency?”

  “Let’s not worry about the form. The young man had hit a shortage of ready cash and he went to shake a tin cup in London.”

  “It would be nice to know who he appealed to for charity.”

  “The ways of the Lord are infinite.”