Let the Games Begin (20 page)

How weird that, between parties, presentations, concerts and salons, Ciba had met just about everyone, and yet not once had he come across this singer. He had read somewhere that she kept to herself and minded her own business. She didn't enjoy the spotlight.

A bit like me
.

Fabrizio had also appreciated the story of her religious conversion. He, too, had felt a strong calling back to his faith. Larita was a thousand times better than that hopeless gang of Italian singers. She stayed at home in a house in the Tuscan–Emilian Appenine mountains and created . . .

Just like I should do
.

The same old vision materialised in his mind. The two of them together in a wooden hut. She would play and he would write. Minding their own business. Perhaps a child. Definitely a dog.

Larita flicked her fringe. ‘There's no reason to thank me. If something is beautiful, it's beautiful, full stop.'

I'm an idiot. I was about to leave and the love of my life is here
.

Chiatti applauded, amused. ‘Well. See what a beautiful fan I found for you? Now, to thank me you'll do me a favour. Have you got a poem?'

Fabrizio frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘A poem, to read before my speech. I'd like to be introduced by one of your poems.'

Larita came to his aid. ‘He doesn't write poetry, as far as I know.'

Fabrizio smiled at her, then turned to Chiatti seriously: ‘Exactly. I have never written a poem in my whole life.'

‘Couldn't you write just one? Even a short one?' The entrepreneur looked at his Rolex. ‘Can't you jot one down in twenty minutes? It'd only have to be a couple of lines.'

‘A little poem about hunters would be wonderful. I recall Karen Blixen . . .' Corman Sullivan stepped in, but was unable to continue as he was overcome with a coughing fit.

‘No. I'm sorry. I don't write poems.'

Chiatti flared his nostrils and made a fist, but his voice remained polite. ‘All right, I have an idea. You could read someone else's poem. I should have a copy of Pablo Neruda's poetry here somewhere. Would that work for you?'

‘Why should I read a poem by another author? There are hundreds of actors out there who would slaughter each other
for a chance to do it. Get one of them to read it.' Fabrizio was beginning to get just a bit pissed off.

Zóltan Patrovic suddenly tapped his glass with a knife.

Fabrizio turned around and was captured by his magnetic gaze. What a singular sensation: it seemed as if the chef's eyes had expanded and were now covering his whole face. Beneath the black hood it was like two enormous ocular globes were staring at him. Fabrizio tried to look away, but was unable to. So he tried to close his eyes and break the spell, but failed again.

Zóltan placed his hand on the writer's forehead.

Instantly, as if someone had pushed it forcefully into his memory, Fabrizio was reminded of a forgotten episode from his childhood. His parents, in summer, were leaving on a sailing boat, and they left him with cousin Anna in a mountain cottage at Bad Sankt Leonhard, in Carinthia, with a family of Austrian farmers. It was a beautiful area, with pine-covered mountains and green fields where piebald cows grazed happily. He wore the typical leather shorts, with braces, and ankle boots with red laces. One day, while he and Anna were hunting for mushrooms in the forest, they had got lost. They were unable to remember where to go. They had kept walking around and around, hand in hand, their fear growing as the night stretched out its tentacles between the identical-looking trees. Luckily, at some point, they had found themselves standing in front of a little chalet hidden amidst the pine trees. Smoke was coming from the chimney and the windows were lit. They knocked and a woman with a blonde chignon sat them down at a table, along with her three children, and gave them Knödel, big balls of bread and meat floating in broth, to eat. Mamma mia, they were so soft and delicious!

Fabrizio realised that he desired nothing more in life than a
couple of Knödel in broth. After all, it didn't cost him anything to say yes to Chiatti, and later he could always find an Austrian restaurant.

‘Okay, I'll read it. No problem. I beg your pardon, but do you know whether there is an Austrian restaurant near here somewhere?'

 

33

Antonio's head bounced on each step and the muffled sound echoed against the vaulted ceiling of the staircase that disappeared into the bowels of the earth. Murder and Zombie dragged the head waiter by his ankles.

The leader of the Beasts, at the head of the gang, shone an electric torch on the walls of the tunnel carved in the tuff rock. Greenish mould and spider webs were all they saw. The air was humid and smelled of wet dirt.

Mantos didn't have the vaguest idea where the stairway led. He had opened an old door and slipped in before anyone could see them.

Silvietta stopped to look at Antonio. ‘Guys, won't all those bangs to the head hurt him?'

Saverio turned to her. ‘He's hard-headed. We're almost there.'

Murder was tired. ‘Thank goodness! We've been going down for ages. It's like a mine.'

In the end they came to a cave. Zombie turned on two torches screwed to the walls, and a part of the room brightened.

It wasn't a cave, but a long room with a low ceiling and rows of rotten barrels and piles of dusty bottles. On each side of the room a rusty grating closed off a narrow tunnel that led who knows where.

‘This place is perfect for a Satanic ritual.' Murder lifted a bottle and dusted off the label: ‘Amarone 1943.'

‘They must be the royal cellars,' Silvietta suggested.

‘You don't perform Satanic rituals in a cellar. At most, in a deconsecrated church or in the open air. In any case, by the light of the moon.' Mantos pointed at a corner underneath the torches: ‘Come on, let's dump my cousin and get out of here. We don't have time to waste.'

Zombie, off to one side, was studying a grate. Silvietta went up to him. ‘That's weird! Four identical tunnels.' She stuck her hand through the bars. ‘I can feel warm air. I wonder where it comes from?'

Zombie shrugged. ‘Who cares?'

‘You reckon it's safe to leave him here? He won't wake up again, will he?'

‘I don't know . . . And I don't really care that much either.' Zombie walked away stiffly.

Silvietta looked after him, feeling perplexed. ‘What's your problem? Are you pissed off?'

Zombie started walking up the stairs without answering.

Mantos followed him. ‘Let's move.'

The Beasts had climbed one hundred steps when they heard a muffled noise coming from below. Murder stopped. ‘What was that?'

‘Antonio must have woken up,' said Silvietta.

Mantos shook his head. ‘Not likely. He'll sleep a couple of hours, at least. Sedaron is strong stuff.'

And they kept climbing.

If, instead, they had gone back down, they would have found Antonio Zauli's body missing.

Speech by Salvatore Chiatti to the Guests

34

Fabrizio Ciba, the book of poems by Neruda in his pocket, was walking in circles behind a bandwagon that had been transformed into a stage for the occasion. They had put a microphone on him and explained that in a few minutes he would go up and read the poem. He couldn't work out why he'd accepted. He turned down everyone. Even the most aggressive press officers. Even political leaders. Even the advertising executives that promised him a pile of cash.

What the fuck had come over him? It was like someone had forced him to accept. And what's more, Pablo Neruda made him sick.

‘Are you ready?'

Fabrizio turned around.

Larita was walking up to him, holding a cup of coffee in her hand. She had a smile that made you want to hug her.

‘No. Not at all,' he admitted, feeling distressed.

She began scraping at the sugar stuck to the bottom of the cup and, without looking at him, confessed: ‘Once I came to Rome to hear you read excerpts from
The Lion's Den
at the Basilica di Massenzio.'

Fabrizio didn't expect that. ‘Why didn't you come to say hi?'

‘We'd never met. I'm shy, and there was a huge queue of people wanting your autograph.'

‘Well, that was a bad decision. This is serious.'

Larita laughed, moving closer. ‘Do you want to know
something? I don't like these sorts of parties. I would never have come, if Chiatti hadn't offered me so much money. You know,' the singer continued, ‘with the money I want to lay the foundations for a sanctuary for cetaceans near Maccarese.'

Fabrizio was caught off-guard and took a weak stab. ‘It would have been a bad decision not to come, because we never would have met.'

She began playing with the coffee cup. ‘That's true.'

‘Listen, have you ever been to Majorca?'

Larita was shocked. ‘I can't believe you're asking me that. Do you know Escorca, on the north of the island?'

‘It's near my house.'

‘I'll be spending six months there to record my new album.'

Fabrizio put his hand over his mouth, feeling excited. ‘I've got a country house in Capdepera . . . !'

Bad luck would have it that, at that moment, the guy who had microphoned him appeared. ‘Doctor Ciba, you need to go on stage. It's your turn.'

‘One second,' Fabrizio said, gesturing to him to stay back. Then he laid a hand on Larita's arm. ‘Listen, promise me something.'

‘What?'

He looked her straight in the eyes. ‘At these parties everyone plays a part, people only just brush against each other. That hasn't happened to us. You said before that you liked
Nestor's Dream
. Now you tell me you're going to Majorca, where I will go to write and find some peace. You have to promise me that we'll see each other again.'

‘I'm sorry, Doctor Ciba, you really need to get up there.'

Fabrizio stared daggers at the guy and then turned to Larita: ‘Can you promise me that?'

Larita nodded. ‘Okay. I promise.'

‘Wait for me here . . . I'll go, look like a dickhead, then come back.'

Fabrizio, elated, went up the stairs that led to the bandwagon, without turning to look at her. He found himself on a small stage, opposite the courtyard with the Italian-style garden packed full of guests.

Ciba waved to the crowd, ran his fingers through his hair, smiled slightly, pulled out the book of poems and was just about to read when he saw Larita making her way through the crowd and moving closer to the stage. His mouth suddenly went dry. He felt as if he'd gone back to the days of high-school recitals. He put the book back and said bashfully: ‘I had planned on reading you a poem by the great Pablo Neruda, but I've decided to recite one of my own.' Pause. ‘I dedicate it to the princess who doesn't break promises.' And he began reciting:

My belly will be the coffer

where I will hide you from the world.

I will fill my veins

with your beauty.

I will make my breast the cage

for your sorrows.

I shall love you as the clownfish loves the sea anemone.

I shall sing your name here, now, at once.

And I shall spruik your sweetness amidst the deaf

and I shall paint your beauty amidst the blind.

There was a moment of silence, and then people starting clapping uproariously. He heard a few shouting, ‘Bravo, Ciba!', ‘You really are a poet!', ‘You're better than Ungaretti!'

Larita clapped her hands and smiled at him.

Fabrizio lowered his head, gestured to them to stop, as a shy modest person would do, while the real-estate magnate got up
on stage and lifted his arms, spurring on the public. The audience was beginning to lose the skin on their hands. The only thing missing was a Mexican wave.

‘Thanks, Fabri. I couldn't have asked for a better introduction.' Chiatti embraced him like they were old friends and pushed him off the stage.

The writer stepped down with his heart beating loudly and the certainty of having done everything wrong.

I overdid it with the poem. Larita will think it was a piece of shit. I love you like the clownfish loves the anemone. Blind people . . . deaf people . . . Oh Lord!

And then, if he was completely honest, that poem wasn't even original. He had re-elaborated in his way, terribly, a poem by the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, which he had learned off by heart when he was sixteen years old, during ski week, to win over a waitress from Bormio.

I've ruined everything
.

He had seen her applauding, but, as everyone knows, why begrudge anyone a little clap?

And tomorrow that arsehole Tremagli will write an article in
Il Messaggero
saying that I plagiarised Gibran. They'll compare my poem and the real one
.

He had to drink something to try to calm down before Larita returned. He went to the hard liquor cart and had them pour him a double Jim Beam.

Sasà Chiatti, on stage, was boasting about the capital he had spent to fix up the Villa. The crowd applauded him regularly every two minutes.

‘Fabrizio . . . Fabrizio . . .'

He turned around, convinced it was Larita, and instead he found Cristina Lotto.

*    *    *

Cristina Lotto was thirty-six years old and the wife of Ettore Gelati, owner of a mineral water consortium and a number of pharmaceutical companies spread across the globe. They had two teenage children, Samuel and Ifigenia, who attended a boarding school in Switzerland.

Cristina hosted a do-it-yourself programme on a satellite channel. She taught viewers how to put together original centrepieces with driftwood, and how to crochet colourful toilet-seat covers.

She was a bony blonde with long, toned legs, a tight bum and a pair of small balloon-shaped tits covered in freckles. She had the face of girl from a good family, educated at a school run by nuns. High, freckled cheekbones and blue eyes framed by straight golden hair. A thin-lipped mouth and a pointy chin.