The Goodbye Kiss (3 page)

    "The
lawyers say it isn't in my interest to play turncoat." I took a chance,
putting out a feeler to see if there was any room for negotiation.

    "You're
useless to us as a turncoat. We're not planning to scrape the bottom of the
barrel. The organization has been fucked for years. We simply put them under
surveillance, so if somebody gets the crazy idea to jump-start the wreck, we're
on to them immediately and save ourselves a ton of work."

    "What's
in it for me, apart from getting off for the night watchman?"

    "Doesn't
avoiding a life sentence seem like enough to you?"

    I
spread my arms. "I can be very helpful."

    The
bull snorted. "We can help
you
and make your stay in jail more
comfortable."

    I lit
a cigarette and started ransacking my memory. An hour later the organization
was liquidated definitively. I could've kept on supplying information I
gathered on other groups over the years, but at this point I felt it'd be a
total waste. Might come in handy later. I've always had a good ear, and in
Italy the militant underworld always distinguished itself by being offhand
about security precautions. They talked in no uncertain terms about
safeguarding the organization, but in practice they honored none of it, showing
a downright weakness for shooting off their mouths and telling secrets.

    I got
to the prison before nightfall. They brought me straight to the registration office,
and Anedda whispered something into a sergeant's ear. The officer turned
towards me and winked. The cop had passed on the orders. I'd have to squeal for
the prison guards too. A corporal took me by the arm and led me to a counter
where he opened a register that looked like something out of the nineteenth
century.

    "Surname?"

    "Pellegrini."

    "First
name?"

    "Giorgio."

    "Date
and place of birth?"

    "May
8th 1957, Bergamo."

    The
guard stopped writing. "May 8th," he repeated. Then he turned to the
others: "This guy was born on the same day Gilles Villeneuve died."

    "I
didn't know. When did it happen?"

    The
corporal glared me in shock. "Ten years ago, in 1982. The greatest tragedy
in the history of car racing." He pointed towards a wall where a little
altar was set up with the photo of the Formula One driver between Ferrari
pennants. Then he pointed his finger in my face. "In this office everybody
supports Milan and Ferrari. Understood?"

    At
San Vittore I settled in right away. Getting by without a scrape wasn't hard;
you just had to respect the unwritten rules and fuck all the rest. They made me
work as a janitor. I had to sweep the corridor in my block and keep my eyes
peeled, especially with the foreigners. Every so often they called me into a
little room near the guard station and asked me for information about a few
jailbirds. I soon learned the trick was to badmouth the ones who weren't
popular in the head office, even if they hadn't done a thing. Sometimes I just
cooked up tales; other times I reported what I'd seen. Now and then Anedda
showed up to get more details or explanations. If I needed something, I
bargained on the remuneration, and when all was said and done, the bull was
openhanded. In time he even got into the habit of bringing me a bottle of
whiskey. He was my only visitor. My family never came to see me. They disowned
me when I skipped to Paris. My father's curses chased me down the stairs of our
house, and I ran like a shot, never turning back. In the beginning I was really
racked, but fate took me a good ways off, and at this point I almost never
thought about it.

    I was
on friendly terms with the die-hard who took the rap for the night watchman's
murder. His name was Giuseppe. One of those guys who regretted nothing because
he remained a communist and a revolutionary. He worked for Dalmine, the machine
factory, like his father and grandfather. Started out gung-ho for the union and
the party, photos of Lenin, Togliatti and Berlinguer on the kitchen wall. Then
he took a different path and went underground. He was rousted by a stoolie, but
when he opened his own mouth, he said only-in dialect, pure Bergamasco-that he
was a political prisoner.

    In
Paris they must've broken open the piggy bank. They bought me a lawyer who was
once a militant in Soccorso Rosso but then established a solid career, joining
a new center-right political party. He told me he took on the case because
retrials were all the rage, they generated enormous publicity, and in my
particular situation there were real prospects for success. He also showed
himself capable of dealing with the press, since dailies and magazines were
buzzing around me. Meanwhile days slipped by, and I began to mull over my
future. So I wouldn't leave with empty pockets I ran a little traffic covered
up by some guards. For one stretch I took a Brazilian transvestite under my
protection. On odd-numbered days, when it was our turn in the shower, I
organized a series of tricks, not more than five at a time to avoid attracting
attention. One carton of Marlboros for a blowjob, two for a fuck. I gave him
ten percent and the assurance that nobody would slash his face. The guards
would call on him in his cell at four in the morning. But that wasn't any of my
business. Nor was there anything to be gained from it. The prison staff never
paid. At that time I also made a slew of interesting acquaintances.
Professionals of every criminal persuasion offered me their friendship. In the
past, a turncoat, especially somebody suspected of being in cahoots with the
cops, would've been knifed as soon as he stuck his nose out of his cell. But
nowadays even prisons aren't what they used to be.

    The
judicial process took its course. Slow but unstoppable. The Court of Cassation
granted the retrial and sent the records to the appellate division of the Court
of Assizes in Milano. At the trial, Giuseppe took pains to avoid looking me in
the face. When the lawyer addressed the court, he explained Giuseppe's attitude
as shame for making me lead the life of a fugitive. Anybody could've seen it
was merely disgust. But by then the 1970s was stale news around the court
house. The judges' deliberations lasted a couple hours, just long enough to
write the decision. I was acquitted. Still had to serve another couple months
for belonging to an armed group, but finally I'd be released from the
nightmare. It started many years ago, when Sergio met me in a bar on the
outskirts and proposed I join the organization. Secret, communist, militant.

    One morning
they told me to turn in my mattress, sheets and mess tin at the storeroom. I'd
just turned thirty-eight. At the exit I found Anedda.

    "Remember
you belong to the Milanese Digos," he barked.

    "I've
retired," I answered in a huff.

    The
bull slammed me against the wall. "You owe me a shit- load of favors. And
don't ever forget somebody else is doing your time."

    I
pried myself loose from his grip and set off along the perimeter wall. I spied
freedom on the other side of the street, but I still didn't feel ready to go
for it. When I reached the tower, I crossed over.

    THE
NOSTALGIA I FELT FOR MY COUNTRY and my once carefree life crystallized into a
childhood memory. My paternal grandparents lived just outside Bergamo, and when
they came to visit me and my sisters, they always brought us a gift, a box of
Otello Dufour, the best bonbons in the world. I'd grab a handful of those
goodies and retreat to my room or the garden with an adventure novel by Emilio
Salgari, unwrapping one after another, laying it delicately on my tongue and
letting it slowly melt away. During the years when I was either on the lam or
behind bars, my most private and painful memories were always capped by the
desire for a chocolate liqueur-filled bonbon. When you're in prison, you're
thinking all the time about the first thing you'll do when you're set free. My
desire was stamped Dufour. I bolted into the first pasticceria I came across
and bought an entire box. But as soon as I unwrapped one, I realized something
wasn't right. Its shape was round, not oval, and it wasn't made of smooth
chocolate as dark as mystery, but lighter and dotted with bits of hazelnut. I
slipped it into my mouth-and almost gagged when it didn't taste anything like
my childhood Otello. I felt double-crossed, ready to start bawling. For years I
dreamed of something that didn't exist anymore. I went back into the shop, and
the owner clinched it: the Otello had been turned into a kind of
chocolate-coated candy.

    "The
things people like today," he said with a shrug.

    I
tossed the box into a trash can. I'd been let down, and it worried me. If I
just got out of prison and ran into such tough luck satisfying my first wish,
my life from here on wasn't going to be a stroll in the park.

    Milano
had changed too. It was crawling with freeloading foreigners bent on picking
Europe's bulging pockets. We were in the exact same situation. I was alone, and
after so many years away I felt like I knew Italy even less than they did. I
took shelter in a religious community that offered assistance to ex- cons. Had
a long heart-to-heart with a priest, a tough Abruzzese in the Mercedari order
who hung around prisons too long to listen to any bullshit. I leveled with him.
"I'm scared stiff. I don't know how to deal with this world; it's not what
I was used to."

    He
sized me up. "I've kept my eye on you these past few years. You're a bad
egg. As bad as they come." Then he clapped me on the knee a couple times.
"But everybody deserves a second chance. You can stay here a litde while,
but don't dream of acting the way you did in San Vittore."

    I
thanked him, and as I walked away, he added: "Don't bother pretending
you're a believer. It isn't necessary here."

    The
money I saved in prison was slipping through my fingers, and what I earned in
the community, assembling shoe racks for a company that specialized in TV
sales, wasn't even enough for cigarettes. Every time I went out I came back
more broke. A meal in a trattoria to forget the slop cooked by a couple of
former junkies. A toss with a streetwalker to make up for what prison forced me
to do without. That was all I could allow myself. I'd go to the centro and
spend hours eyeing the people and cars. A ton of cash was floating around, and
mostly everybody was oozing confidence. I felt out of place. Tried to hook up
with an elegant forty-something. Milano was full of women like Regine, but much
prettier and much more screwable. Dieting, working out at the gym, going to the
hairdressers. I got off on their need to be constantly competitive in terms of
beauty and sensuality. But there was no way they'd notice me. My face told my
story: I was a marginal, an outcast. I looked for work, but it dawned on me if
I took that approach, I'd be fucked for eternity. I'd stay a bum. My plans for
the future went no further than mere subsistence, observing the world from the
back of a fast-food restaurant, my hair rank with grease. Money. I needed money
to lift myself from the dung heap I was stuck in. Then I'd establish a respectable
position and stroll through the centro dressed to the nines, flaunting the
worry-free face of a winner. And I wouldn't make the same mistake as everybody
I met in San Vittore: try to make money, but stay a fucking hood. If you took
that route, the only sure prospect was jail. Risking another court date made
sense only if the cash was a means of elevating yourself socially. When I was
living with my family, before getting involved with the movement and letting
them fuck with my brain, I belonged to middle-class Bergamo. Thinking back on
how I sneered at that scene made me feel like banging my head against a wall.

    I
started to lose hope fast. Even being a criminal wasn't easy. The city was
armor-plated, and any action you might horn in on was already under the control
of gangs from Eastern Europe, North Africa or the Far East. The priest made me
take a job in a bar. It turned out to be my lucky break. One morning I served
coffee to an old acquaintance from San Vittore. A guy from Bari who got time off
for ratting on a boss in the Pugliese mafia, the
Sacra Corona Unita.

    "How's
it going?" I asked him, checking out his smart suit.

    "Aces
with me," he answered, eyeing in turn my plastic wristwatch. "But
you… what are you doing working a counter? You're wasted here. You sick? A big
dude like you could be earning his living in a more dignified way, no?"

    His
tone was sarcastic. I wanted to slash his face with the knife I used for
peeling lemons. I smiled instead. "I'm looking for the right opportunity."