Globusz^® Publishing 

Like he’d seen in the backdrop Lelia had painted for a musical, the fortress hill town of Calcata stood on a picturesque spur of red tuff overlooking the valley of junipers and hazelnut trees lying along the Treia River. All its buildings were made of tuff, the same material as that employed by the Romans in their earliest constructions before they turned to travertine.

Although unique, the buildings were also unsafe, and had been declared so by the government about fifty years ago. Calcata was therefore meant to be a ghost town, since its inhabitants had been evacuated to the nearby Calcata Nuova. But a bunch of painters, sculptors, stage designers like Lelia, talented craftsmen and craftswomen, interior decorators, ecologists, animal rights activists, pamphlet writers, vegetarians—some of whom were drug addicts and all of whom were united by alternative values—had bought the unsafe houses, caves, stables, and deconsecrated churches, and had come to live here, making Calcata the centre of the unconventional.

Passing by Saint Cornelius and Saint Peter’s Collegiate Church on his way to Lelia, he reminded himself that it was where Jesus Christ’s foreskin was kept. Nobody could tell how and when such a relic had reached this place from Bethlehem. According to the legend, Maria’s midwife preserved it. Then St Peter took it to Rome, and more than a millennium and a half later, during the sack of Rome in 1527, one of Charles V’s lansquenets brought it here.

It was ten past eleven and he was afraid that Lelia might be already gone. As he quickened his step, a poster on the wall of a shop selling pastries made of organic products caught his eye. It read, “From the Xerox Machine to the Baud. The Image in the Hyper-Media Era.” It had to do with telematic art. Apart from Giannetto, whose studio was in Via Margutta, the Rome street of the artists, did Tara or any of the painters he’d met yesterday live here in Calcata? Did Lelia know any of them? Did Lelia and Tara know each other?

As he reached Lelia’s place, he thought about Debby. Then he recalled his intention to rid his mind of her until this evening, and knocked at the door. He knocked three times. At last, he heard the sound of somebody sliding back a bolt—and Lelia, topless, appeared in the doorway. Without uttering a word, she hugged him, kissing him frenetically on the neck and the ear.

“Stop it—put something on,” he said, freeing himself from her hug.

She picked up a black kimono and threw it on her shoulders.

“Slip into it,” he insisted.

“What d’you fear, that Debby may be jealous? Or haven’t you ever seen another woman’s tits?”

The same old tune. She shouldn’t have left San Bernardo. When she was or had just been high on coke, she behaved like a bitch on heat, taking it for granted that her full lips and rounded breasts with their turgid nipples might be a turn-on to her own brother. No wonder Debby resented her provocative attitude. “Don’t be stupid!”

She did as she was told. “Sit down, Paul. I’ll make you a Turkish coffee.”

“No thank you. I don’t have much time.”

“Sit down,” she repeated.

He sat on a cane-sided couch; she, on a cane swivel chair. Her flat consisted of only one large room with one small window about eight feet from the floor—it must be a converted stable, he reckoned. To him, the furnishing seemed a confused but pleasant mixture of things. It contained another swivel chair, a much larger easy chair, a number of cushions on the floor, her drawing board, a wicker linen chest, a nineteenth century oak wardrobe, a cheap sideboard that might be found in a peasant cottage at the beginning of the last century, and modern paintings all over the place except for one wall, which was covered with books on steel shelves. The table was a DIY job—an untreated softwood board over two trestles. The double bed hadn’t been made. The kitchenette was behind a Chinese screen.

She got up and joined him on the couch, sitting with one leg tucked under the other and her head and body turned towards him. “Kiss me on the neck, like when I was still a child.”

“Don’t be stupid...I want to know what’s happened at San Bernardo.”

She hesitated. “A man died and a health assistant stole a car to dispose of his dead body.”

“I’m not here for the official version,” he said, remembering the story’s lead-in on the TV news at midnight, and thinking about the details that came up on a private radio this morning. The dead man in the boot had been named as Nino Landi, the driver of the Punto as Marcello Caramia, a trafficker as well as a health assistant, and as Paul had guessed, the psychiatrist who had recognized them was Dr Claudia Fossati.

“And so?”

“It’s the truth,” she said.

“You tell me the truth?”

“OK,” she sighed. “An inmate had a quarrel with another inmate and the other inmate killed him. The health assistant decided to cover up the killing.”

Ah, Caramia had acted on his own—it didn’t make sense. “Don’t give me this crap! Tell me who told Caramia to dump Nino Landi.”

Her eyebrows shot upwards. “Nino worked in the slaughterhouse. A very lazy guy. Didn’t do anything.” She stopped, swallowing hard. “Fausto Turini, the other inmate, a real fucking thug, was in charge of the pig slaughterhouse. You see, he’d been at San Bernardo ten years. He and the inmates who helped him to run the slaughterhouse gave Landi a beating and Landi died.”

“D’you know them all?”

She paused. “I might find out who they were.”

“Did you also know Caramia?”

“Yes. I found him attractive.”

Paul shrugged. It was a provocative remark to wind him up, since Caramia was his lookalike. “Why did Lodiacono report him missing?” he queried.

“Nobody had told him anything about the beating. He didn’t know the man had died.”

“And who told Marcello Caramia to dispose of the dead body—the Holy Ghost?”

“I already told you nobody did,” she hissed.

“And I already told you not to give me this crap.”

She waited again. “I believe he’d seen the beating. Maybe he felt he should have stopped it.”

“Are inmates beaten up frequently?”

“I don’t think so. Haven’t seen any, anyway.”

He paused. Her account didn’t wash with him. It was widely known that the managing director, that Lodiacono, exercised full control over San Bernardo and its six hundred acres of land. It was a self-contained organization, with activities ranging from agricultural production to horse breeding and training, and to book publishing and commentary film making. As well as its own slaughterhouses, and its own butcheries, San Bernardo had its own medical and veterinary service and a number of shops selling organic food and all sorts of home-made products. Each branch was headed by an inmate who had successfully gone through Lodiacono’s rehab programme, but they were only nominal heads. They did the hard work. They didn’t make decisions—Lodiacono refused to delegate power. Nothing happened there without his approval.

“Lelia,” said Paul, eventually, “it was Lodiacono, wasn’t it, that ordered Caramia to dump Landi’s dead body...”

“No! I’m dead certain it wasn’t him!”

“You were discharged last Friday. The day after the beating, wasn’t it? Doesn’t sound like a coincidence, does it?”

Lelia’s hands started to shake.

“Did Dr Fossati discharge you earlier than she should?”

She seemed on the verge of tears. “You’re the only person I love, and you don’t give a damn about me.”

“Bullshit!” he exclaimed, but admitted to himself that she had a point. He was her only relative, and yet how many times wouldn’t he call her back after she’d kept ringing him up, even at his bloody magazine? Was he so henpecked that the idea of doing anything against Debby’s wishes scared the shit out of him? No, it wasn’t that. Nor was her sniffing the reason why he’d rather cut himself off from her. No, he found her promiscuity an embarrassment. He was aware that the men who knew her labelled her the best fuck around.

He forced himself to stroke her cheek. “Darling, it’s not like that. You’re wrong.”

“I’m bloody right!” she yelled. “I was shut down there without a soul who cared about me, who cared about what I think, what I am, what I want do with my life...and when you come and see me, what d’you do? You give me the third degree.”

He recalled her as a little girl, and hugged her. “Calm down. You’re my little sis. I do care about you, much more than you think. I really do.”

“Are you speaking the truth? Aren’t you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying, little sis. You’re important to me.”

Still crying, she kissed him gently on the lips.

He didn’t like that. It made him uneasy. “Look,” he said, “I now must go but please, give me a ring tomorrow night. Debby wants to see you, too. You must come to us for lunch or supper, whichever suits you best. I’ll let you know when Debby can make it. All right?”

* * *

The deadline for the week’s reports was next Thursday and Paul had already filed a special feature on the scam of men’s designer clothing. So, he knew that Valdo Sarazani, the editor of the Meridiano, didn’t expect him to put forward any proposals. As well as that, he knew that Valdo hated giving anybody more space than he’d budgeted for, and since Paul meant not only to change the subject of his feature to that of the San Bernardo murder, but to run it as a cover story and a piece of investigative journalism, he was ready for a fight.

It was half past three but it was reasonably fresh in here. The editorial office was on the first floor of a large block built off the station at the end of the nineteenth century, when the speculators started spoiling the beauty of papal Rome and what, at the time, were its still rural outskirts. Fortunately, however, the partition walls of the flat were unusually thick and the ceiling of the room unusually high, and that, coupled with the green curtains of the windows giving out onto Via Farini, a street where the multi-storey ugly buildings screened out the rays of the sun, held the heat in check.

As soon as the news editor, a fat man sporting a beard, mentioned the San Bernardo connection with the dead bodies on the Via del Mare, Paul put in, “Ernesto Lodiacono knew of the murder and tried to cover it up.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed the news editor, lowering his eyelids.

Valdo looked directly at Paul. “How d’you know it?”

Without disclosing his source, Paul gave a short account of what he’d learned from Lelia. Then he concluded, “I can prove Lodiacono’s cover-up. I think I can prove it by Thursday.”

The managing editor, a fifty-year-old bleached blonde, suggested, brandishing her pen as if it were a sword, “Thursday is too near. Let’s put the idea on hold. Perhaps next week or the week after we can score a hit both with Lodiacono and with the police if they haven’t done the job.”

“We’d be playing with fire if we published anything against Lodiacono anyway!” affirmed the news editor.

Paul said, reminding himself that Lodiacono had built up a profitable business exploiting his reputation as a caring man, “If Lodiacono is guilty, and I can tell he is, we’d better strike at him before the others do and thus show everybody that we don’t only strike at the establishment.”

“He’s one of us!”

“What are you saying? We’ve got nothing to do with him.”

The cultural editor started drumming his fingers on the desk. “We’re wasting our frigging time.”

“But Paul is right. We’ve got nothing to do with that swindler of a Lodiacono and his fucking San Bernardo. Paul is right, he’s fucking right!” shouted the editorial secretary, a tall, lanky middle-aged man with a mass of uncombed grey hair.

“Don’t shout.” The news editor jabbed his forefinger at him.

“You’re talking nonsense!”

“Why don’t you go to the café round the corner for a cup of camomile tea?”

“Please, stop it,” said Valdo in his resonant voice. “Everybody has a point. Let’s assume Paul can prove the cover-up. Now, if we expose Lodiacono as a fraud, we dispel a myth, and if we dispel the myth of Lodiacono the defender of the drug addicts’ right to reconstruct their filthy lives, people will say, Ah ah, you see, the humanitarians are not to be trusted! On the other hand, if we back down and the establishment press move in, people will say, You see, those hypocrites of the Meridiano didn’t dare to touch him.”

“It seems to me we’re splitting hairs.”

“And stop it!” Valdo yelled, quickly raising his arm up and down once.

“Valdo,” said the news editor, this time smiling, “I don’t like arguing. But why don’t you face the fact that until we know more this alleged cover-up is no news?”

Paul stood up and walked to the door—he’d had a vision of Debby. Would she like the dress he couldn’t buy her last month? He had the money now. Why was he here, listening to that skunk’s idea of what made news?

He turned his head. “May I remind you that according to the latest analysis published by Reporters without Borders, Italy ranks fortieth in the world for freedom of information, after Peru, Paraguay, and Namibia. She’s the last country in the West. See you later.”

“Paul, wait, please,” begged Valdo, kindly. “I’ll tell you what. This week we’ll use your feature on designer clothes. We’ll use it as a cover story. I haven’t decided it now—I already thought we should run it like that. It’s a good piece for July. Lively enough and at the same time, it’s a denunciation of a scam. Next week, if you’ve completed your investigation and Lodiacono did know of the fucking murder, we’ll run the San Bernardo piece.”

* * *

She’d fixed him his favourite summer dinner—trenette al pesto and caprese, a salad of tomatoes and mozzarella. A good sign. Debby didn’t care very much for pasta. She could cook it al dente, though, like the Neapolitans did in Naples, not like the Italian restaurants did in London, and she’d done it for him.

“I, too, have a surprise for you,” he said, as he was finished with a delicious iced apricot mousse.

“I know,” she sighed. “You shouldn’t buy it.”

She must have seen the name of the shop on the bag—he’d spoilt the surprise by leaving it in his study. “It suits you, surely. Believe me, Debby. I can afford it now.”

Debby got up and sat on one of the two easy chairs they had here in the tinello, the breakfast room where they ate their meals. The two lines that suddenly marked the corners of her mouth told him that contrary to his hopes, he’d misunderstood her again. Something was wrong. She hadn’t forgotten about yesterday. He’d felt sure she had because of the interest she’d shown when in his account about the San Bernardo cover-up. She’d also smiled, Tell Lelia to pop in—I’d love to see her.

“Paul, we have to talk,” she said in a low voice, twining one leg around the other. “I’ll do the dishes later.”

He studied her. She wore one of his shirts. Perhaps she only had her slip on under it. A few years ago, he would have taken her to bed straightaway, but his age made him feel he was living on borrowed time. Some women liked men in their late forties. Not Debby. At least, so she used to say. Still, he had blue eyes, and she also used to say she adored his blue eyes, and he sported a big moustache, and she’d always said she would never sleep with a man without a moustache.

“Debby, why don’t you put on the new dress and let’s go out for a walk?”

“Jesus, how could you be so dumb!” She shook her head. “My feelings mean nothing to you.”

“I thought you’d rather talk about them outside. A breath of fresh air would do you good.”

“A breath of fresh air? I don’t even remember what it’s like.” She sighed. “I hate living here...Paul, let’s go back to England.”

He waited. “When?”

“Yesterday!”

Good Lord! If they had to leave, he should start looking for a job now, and that would take time. He knew what she had in mind. Both of them could look for one when they were in England. They could go to Ipswich. Her mum, her boring, thick mum, would put them up for a while. But what were they going to do if neither of them found any jobs before they ran out of the payout he could get from the Meridiano? If he could get it. The Meridiano was a coop. They should be prepared to buy him out, but they were so hard up for money...

“Paul, you know, don’t you, that if I stay here I’ll need counselling pretty soon?”

He remained silent.

She went on, “You’ve just bought me a dress. Well, d’you know what happened to the two dresses I bought last month? They’ve got two grease stains that cannot be removed. D’you know why? Because they park their filthy cars on the pavement so close to the front door of this bloody building that there’s no room to get across and step inside. If I tell them not to park on the pavement they insult me. A man, an old man opened the passenger’s door and laughed, Quick get in. You’ll enjoy it. My car is big enough. A young man dressed like the Italians do, in a shirt and pants perfectly matched and perfectly ironed with precise folds and creases, gave me the two fingers and said fuck off in English. You see, that shit must have been to England and had spotted my English accent.”

Paul nodded. He could recite everything she might say. She risked her life every time she walked across the zebra crossing. If she drove his car, she couldn’t even stop at the zebra crossing, for if she did to let people walk across, the drivers behind her shouted stronza. Once they called her puttana after she yelled to a woman who hadn’t stopped at the red light to be careful, even though a disabled man was passing across in a wheelchair.

Paul could go on and on. Last week she was walking with a friend in Via Nazionale. A young thug snatched her purse and then jumped on his accomplice’s moped and disappeared riding pillion. They hurried to the police. Did he know how long they kept them waiting? Two hours, and when they saw them, they didn’t give a fuck about her as a witness. They wanted to see her papers. They wanted to see if she had the right to stay in this beautiful, sunny paradise.

“Quite true,” he said, “but—”

“I know what you want to say,” she burst in. “I should weigh up all the pros and cons.” She stood up and paced the floor. “I can’t, I can’t.”

He knew it had been a testing experience for her. The Post Office, the bank, the supermarket round the corner...The Romans pushed their way through, the Romans didn’t queue up, and because she queued up without pushing her way through, she never got to the counter. They quarrelled everywhere. They scared her with their aggressive behaviour.

“But it’s nothing new. I’m only asking you to be patient until I get a job in England.”

“Paul, enough is enough. This country is driving me mad. I can’t imagine myself in the same school in autumn. I can’t see myself dealing with the same people. People who do no studies, no research, but have a finger in every pie and spend their worthless time manoeuvring their way to what they regard as the best assignments.”

“But I haven’t said I don’t want to go.”

“Now, we’ve got to go now. I’m bloody fed up with hearing that Italian food is the best in the world, that everybody admires the Italians for their taste. The truth is, their school system is in a mess, their universities resemble a crazy chain of production making a useless product, they invent nothing, but they’re satisfied with the tale that all the world copies them because the Italians and only the Italians know how to enjoy life...”

“I beg you, Debby—give me three months. Until October. I’ll start looking for a job as soon as I’m through with the San Bernardo story.”

“Let’s do it like this. I go next week and you join me in October.”

“I’m not happy here either. Don’t leave me alone. Please.”

She paused for a long minute. “All right,” she whispered.

He got up. “Debby, amore, I must ask you a question.” He looked her in the eyes. “Do you still love me?”

She paused again, and it seemed an eternity before she spoke. “I’m going through a bad crisis, Paul. I cannot answer the way you’d like me to…”