The Night of Rome Page 5

  He’d been with Berlinguer, and people had called him a Soviet. He’d supported the about-face with which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the adjective Communist had been eliminated from the party’s logo. Which mean he had become a Socialist. He’d found himself caught up, in spite of himself, in the never-ending feud among the old-school thoroughbreds of the new formation. The Thing, that’s what they’d called it. La Cosa. And maybe, in hindsight, that hadn’t been so far from the truth after all. He’d made his way among alpha males, why deny it: what he was interested in, much more than the Cosa, had been the cause. He wanted to change Italy, not grab power and a position for himself. They’d appointed him party officer in charge of justice policies. One of those positions that everyone else tried to avoid. Officially, the party stood with the judges, the rule of law, and so on and so forth. And there actually were a few good judges, truth be told. But the DNA, the political DNA, that was quite another matter. If the party’s leaders had had any say in the matter, they would have sent the judges, whatever political hue their robes might be, straight to Siberia. His advent in the Italian Parliament had begun as an exciting adventure but then, with the passing of time, it had turned into an extended session of torture.

  Endless years: the present kept changing, and he, Adriano, continued to confront it with the categories of the past. Years of bitter reawakenings, experienced as the struggle to defend the idea, less and less widely accepted and shared, that the left was somehow different. Against everything and against everyone: against so-called progress, against the crisis of the parties, against his own comrades. A total failure. Bah. In any case, at age 58, he was a relative infant of a retiree. If someone had asked him to write an epitaph for his headstone, he’d have just used the title of that wonderful film by Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov, A Friend Among Foes, a Foe Among Friends.

  He crumpled up the greasy paper from the fried codfish filet, got to his feet, and decided to walk through the front door of the club. If for no other reason than that the Roman party was by now the only Indian reservation where he was still allowed to roam and graze. They had assigned him to do a boring, exhausting, and interminable survey about the state of membership recruitment and the relationship of the party with the region’s populace. But they hadn’t been at all pleased with his findings.

  From the Nazareno, the headquarters that had replaced the venerable old building in Vie delle Botteghe Oscure—every time that he walked past the place his heart lurched a little—they’d sent the message that the idea of accepting the existence of a “healthy DP” and a “sick DP,” and having identified and named the lords of the membership cards, “reeked of the twentieth century.” It was clearly just further evidence of his resentments and his quest for personal visibility. Yes, that’s exactly what they had said. Personal visibility. We are History? Just give me a break!

  A black Mercedes pulled up in front of the club. A young woman got out. Adriano Polimeni recognized her. His first impulse was to turn and run. Chiara.

  Chiara Visone.

  She was beautiful, as always. The way he remembered her. No doubt about it. A statuesque body. Her features fine and regular, her lips sensual, fleshy, but not puffy. Green eyes that could drive a man crazy, lit up with a magnetic energy.

  Chiara, who had given him the gift of an illusory second youth. Then she had mortally wounded him. But he couldn’t go on running from her. It was all over by now.

  Chiara seemed not to have noticed him there, but Adriano knew perfectly well that wasn’t the case. He’d even picked up a furtive glance, and had noticed how she’d started ever so slightly. Proof of the existence of a flickering pilot light of warmth still burning in that magnificent carbon-based living organism, though it seemed to him that she was actually running on cold fusion. Or perhaps it was just her fear that Adriano, with one of his usual outbursts, might ruin the evening for her. But she had no reason to worry. The senator was in no mood for fighting.

  A dozen or so activists gathered around her with a groupie-like intensity.

  “What do you say, Chiara, shall we save the club?”

  “Shall we refound this party?”

  Chiara broke into a welcoming smile.

  “Haven’t you read my tweets?”

  A guy with a foolish gaze held up his arm, displaying the screen of his smartphone:

  @visone #activistsdon’tworry

  @visone #historystartstoday

  @visone #theclubismyhome

  @visone #freeofdebt

  @visone #ademocraticdrive

  A hysterical wave of applause burst out that ensured that Sebastiano Laurenti’s arrival went unnoticed. He’d just stepped out of the Audi that he’d told his driver to park, prudently, in front of the church of San Carlo ai Catinari. He’d wrapped up his light, short, narrow-waisted Prada overcoat and had continued on foot. Until he spotted her outside the club, surrounded by that knot of adoring fans.

  Chiara Visone.

  Enough to drive anyone crazy. And in fact, since he’d first seen her while channel surfing, he had gone a little crazy over her.

  He’d wracked his brains for weeks trying to figure out a credible scenario whereby he could engineer a “chance” encounter and get into her life. Until one day a news brief had enlightened him.

  Friday, March 13th, at 8 P.M., a special membership drive at the DP “La Bandiera” club to rescue the historic chapter from its burden of debt, 130,000 euros, a shortfall that threatens its future survival. The Honorable Chiara Visone will attend.

  And people say that there’s nothing to be gained from buying the daily newspaper, he had smiled to himself, tossing the copy of the paper in the air as if it were so much confetti.

  Friday the 13th, he’d made a note on his smartphone. Friday the 13th . . . That day and date, porta zella, to use the Roman phrase for bringing bad luck, only in English-speaking nations. And so, there he was. For the first time in his life, in a party headquarters. Certainly—as Samurai had taught him—you have politicians come pay calls on you, you don’t go to visit them. Still, he said to himself, you could certainly make an exception for a diva. Even Samurai would have approved.

  As he entered the club, Sebastiano saw Malgradi. He was standing there as a stiff as a man with a sandwich board next to a table with a jar for contributions from party activists. Just pathetic, the kind of thing you’d expect to see at the old Communist Festa dell’Unità. Behind him, a giant poster in various languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Arabic, Chinese. The poster for La Casa di Vicky, the clinic of repentance. What voracious greed. The funding he got from the city wasn’t enough for him. He even had the gall to ask for donations. As relentless as a garden slug. Still, useful. Extremely useful. And not as freaking horny as his brother, most important of all. Sufficient wisdom to have chosen Power instead of Pussy.

  He saw that Malgradi was deep in conference with Visone and decided not to go over. Not right away, at least, limiting himself to a meaningful nod in the face of the surprised glance from the slobbery bastard, who’d noticed Sebastiano as he went on speaking in a low voice to the Honorable Visone.

  “Well, Chiara, I just wanted to let you know that the issue of that back rent isn’t a simple one. There’s the problem of the hundred thirty thousand euros of unpaid rent and if we continue to count on the twenty-euros-a-head memberships of these paupers who belong to the club, we’ll have time to change the party’s name three more times.”

  “At the Nazareno they don’t want to hear a word about it. They say that the club has to find its own solution. I’d even thought of trying to get a sponsor.”

  “A sponsor?

  “Yes. Like I don’t know, the oil company ENI, or the power authority, ENEL . . . ”

  “I’ve never heard of a state-run company sponsoring a political party.”

  “You must have missed Finmeccanica, Temis
tocle.”

  Malgradi lit up like a Christmas tree. All the things that Visone knew. Could it be that she too was chowing down at that immense state-sponsored feed trough?

  “At Finmeccanica times have changed. And the personnel, too, I’d say,” he ventured.

  “So what if it was a compassionate private citizen who solved the problem?”

  Sebastiano’s voice made Visone whip around. Who the hell was this guy who’d been eavesdropping on them?

  Malgradi muttered.

  “Chiara, let me introduce a friend . . . ”

  “There’s no need, Temistocle. I can introduce myself. I’m a grown-up.”

  Sebastiano put on the mask of the Irresistible Rogue. The swashbuckling smile of the fearless musketeer. The most successful routine in his repertoire. That was the moment he loved best in any courtship. His first daring lunge. Almost always decisive. One way or the other. Even better than the first night. Than the first kiss. Because that was the moment when the adrenaline surged up to your cerebral cortex, your stomach filled up with butterflies, and you could listen to yourself as you spoke. As if you were some other person.

  “My name is Sebastiano Laurenti. I’m a financial consultant. I’ve never voted in my life, but I do know one rule. Trust your intuition.”

  Visone found the presentation sufficiently obvious to reveal itself for what it actually was. Arrogant and devoid of substance.

  “People with intuition never listen in on other people’s conversations. Ever,” she said.

  “I’ve read the newspapers, though.”

  Well, well, thought Chiara. If that guy was capable of taking a flat no on the fly without blinking, then maybe the matter needed to be delved into a little more deeply.

  “And exactly what have you read in the newspapers, Signor Lauretti?”

  What a fantastic bitch. She’d intentionally pronounced his last name wrong.

  “That you need a million and three hundred thousand euros.”

  “Well you weren’t reading very carefully. It’s a hundred and thirty thousand euros.”

  “Well, you weren’t listening very carefully. It’s Laurenti, not Lauretti.”

  Yes, indeed, there was nothing wrong with this guy. And he was mighty easy on the eyes, when it came to that. She doled out a smile.

  “Well, then, now that we’ve corrected each other, what does your intuition tell you?”

  “It tells me this.”

  Sebastiano reached into the inside breast pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a cashier’s check. One hundred thirty thousand euros.

  Chiara smiled and shook her head.

  “What is this, some kind of joke?”

  “It’s a donation. If you’ll accept it, in the next few days we can settle the various tax issues. The companies that I represent are happy to contribute to the proper functioning of a healthy democracy.”

  Visone took the check, visibly flustered. She asked Malgradi to put it into an envelope, and then she turned to leave.

  “If you’ll be so kind as to excuse me, I need to get inside. I’m scheduled to speak and it’s getting late.”

  “I’ll stay to listen, if you don’t mind.

  Malgradi stood stiff and awkward as a smoked cod, and as soon as Visone had reached the speakers’ table, he grabbled Sebastiano by the arm.

  “Have you gone stupid? Here we’re going to drag things out and then we’re just going to dump this club . . . What the fuck do we need the historical location for? Do you really want to pay politicians’ debts for them?”

  Sebastiano went on looking at Visone.

  “Oh, all right, now I get it . . . This is about the pussy . . . Expensive, though, don’t you think . . . Anyway, look out. That one will eat you whole, entrails and all.”

  Visone took the floor, struggling a little to smother the applause. Sitting on either side of her were the chairman of the club, Marcello Lagramigna, the lord of (fake) membership cards for the Roman DP, and Malgradi.

  She cleared her throat with a fetching little cough.

  “My dear friends, thank you so much for being here tonight. So many of you, and you bring such passion. You deserve the best. You deserve the good news I bring with me this evening.”

  A satisfied buzz ran through the crowd. At the far end of the room, Adriano Polimeni was slowly massaging his eyelids, just shutting out the world for a moment. The show was beginning. He couldn’t miss it for anything in the world. He had to drain the chalice down to the last bitter dregs. All of it. Down to the last drop.

  “I’d like to begin with the remarkable results of our membership drive, which you know all about, and which I don’t want to bore you with. Except to say, before revealing to you the big surprise that brings me here tonight, that we owe a debt of gratitude. So, Gra-zie! Gra-zie! Grazie to you and grazie to our friend Marcello.”

  Marcello Lagramigna. The name was circled in red in his report on the party. The top cacique of the mob of caciques—to use the term for a South American party boss—that the Roman party had devolved into. A guy in his early forties whose office had been blown up in Tor Bella Monaca shortly after opening for business. “Unknown parties” had been responsible for the bombing, which had come hard on the heels of the latest round of hirings in the companies now in municipal receivership. That office had been an old betting parlor controlled by a local ring of Calabrians; he’d repurposed it as “a meeting place with the citizens,” and his name loomed large on the sign out front where you had to use a magnifying glass to find the DP symbol. Polimeni’s mouth twisted into a grimace of disgust.

  “Grazie, Marcello! Grazie, Marcello!”

  The old fraud shot to his feet like Rocky Balboa. The only thing left to do now would be to grab his left wrist with his right fist high over his head. But for that matter, he didn’t even need to, he could rely on the applause of the claque of cleaned-up immigrants with whom he’d stocked the front row and who were now clapping themselves silly. As fake as the audience with its canned laughter on TV talk shows. Miserable bums that “Grazie, Marcello” had enrolled by the hundreds into the party, paying fifty euros a membership.

  Visone gave Lagramigna a hug and pointed him to his chair, believing that the minute of celebrity conceded to him had been sufficient.

  “It hasn’t been easy to bring the party to this point. We’ve had to battle against those who were unwilling to take a step backward. With many friends that we thank, of course, for what they did in the last century. But who have been unable or unwilling to recognize that this is our time. And that in a time of a liquid society, a party is and cannot help but be gaseous, free-form. A swarm of bees that gathers and scatters, as unpredictable as the wind.”

  “Gaseous.” “Swarm of bees.” Jesus Christ. Maybe it really was starting to become a bit much, thought Polimeni. Just then he felt a hand touch his arm. An elderly party activist in a wheelchair waved for him to lean in.

  “She’s got it in for you, you get that, right?”

  Polimeni smiled. If you only knew, old comrade . . .

  Visone was flying high.

  “There are even those who’ve gone so far as to claim that in Rome there were, or even worse, there still are a Good Party and a Bad Party. A party open to the city and to the needs of the citizens, and then—I quote verbatim—a ‘self-referential’ party, ‘which wheels and deals in membership cards and official salaries.’ ‘Inclined to participate in the cynical, cooperative management of that which exists.’ ‘A campaign committee, much more than a party.’ Well, let me ask you, friends: How can you measure the activism and the state of health of a party? By new memberships, by members who think for themselves and only for themselves, or by the second, or third, term in a Parliament filled with aging professional politicians appointed by party secreteriats? And what does this term—‘cooperative management’—even mean? ‘D
iversity’ can’t be a definitive condemnation to marginality. Winning means bring those who think differently from us over to our side. We aren’t better than our adversaries. We simply have better ideas than they do.”

  The applause brought the house down. That didn’t keep Polimeni from standing side by side with his little old man.

  “That’s right, Comrade Polimeni, she has it in for you. She’s really pissed off. It seems to me that you’d better get out of here, before she overdoes things.”

  She’d already overdone things. Polimeni nodded. He started making his way toward the door, when he was stopped in his tracks by the big reveal.

  “And anyway, friends, I’m not here to reopen old wounds. I’m here for a celebration. Our celebration. This evening we are struggling to collect funds to prevent the closure of this, the oldest of all our homes. This home. One hundred thirty thousand euros is a lot of money even for a community of women and men as generous as you are. But . . . ”

  Consummate actress that she was, she let her audience simmer for a few seconds.

  “ . . . but a man, a fellow citizen, has decided to push aside, all by himself, this mountain of debt that’s crushing us. Allow me to introduce to you Dottor Sebastiano Laurenti. And let me show you the measure of his courage.”

  Like in some grand prize game, Visone opened the white envelope and extracted the check. While Laurenti got to his feet in the midst of a now silent crowd.

  “We can only offer the generous Dottor Laurenti membership card number 1 of our new membership drive. The drive that I’m announcing here tonight and which inaugurates the new season of a party that is going to change in its approach to Rome and, therefore, to the country at large.”