Then, above the music, a male voice stood out from the others, breaking the spell of the dance. ‘Right, that’s enough, I’m going to smash his face in!’
While still concentrating entirely on the rhythm, Pierre became aware that something was wrong, that the rising murmur was not only one of admiration, and that the phrase that had just rung out didn’t herald anything good. He took advantage of a pirouette to turn and look. At that very moment a thick-set man broke away from the grip of two people who had been holding him back, and marched threateningly towards him. The Filuzzi King extended his twirl by a turn and a half, and ended up right on top of the man, exploiting the effect of surprise and the run-up to knock him over. Things heated up. Brando took a punch to the eye without seeing who was hitting him, Gigi threw his tie around the neck of a short-arse from behind, while Sticleina was already on the ground wrestling with someone much bigger than him. Inevitably, some peacemakers tried to restrain the beasts, get between them, to hold back the hotheads.
‘Come on, guys, there’s no need for this!’
‘Hey, we’re all here to enjoy ourselves.’
‘Bòna, Pirein, Pompetti’s calling the cops!’
The shoving and kicking lasted no more than ten minutes, enough time for the most frenzied to give and receive at least one punch, but also enough for cooler heads to persuade the musketeers from Bar Aurora to make their way home and the Pratello guys to calm down.
‘They didn’t hit you nearly hard enough.’
Nicola had always been a light sleeper. Perhaps whatever it was that gnawed away inside him kept him awake. Perhaps it was the war. From the doorway to the room he looked at Pierre with a mixture of scorn and commiseration.
Pierre sank even deeper into the armchair, loosening his tie. ‘And yet they know me well enough not to try it on with me again. Sons of bitches.’
He dabbed at his injured mouth with his handkerchief.
‘If our mother was here she’d give you what for, I can tell you that. And you’re asking for a kicking, chasing skirt all the time.’
Pierre was too tired to talk, but whenever he tried to shut up, his anger got the better of him. ‘You leave our mother out of this, understand?’
‘You come in at this time of night with your mouth smashed in, and tomorrow you’ll be half dead behind the bar. If aunt Iolanda didn’t keep on at me to keep on at you, I’d give you a good kick up the arse and there’s an end to it.’
‘And leave aunt Iolanda out of it too!’
Nicola’s hoarse voice was filled with disgust. ‘They’ve broken their backs bringing you up, and I hope you’re satisfied. It’s almost a blessing that our mother’s dead!’
Pierre exploded. ‘Shut up! What do you know about it? What the fuck are you always on about? Always judging, always banging on. So I like pussy, so what? I like dancing and I’m good at it and everyone admires me, you know? They look at me. And isn’t there some satisfaction in that as well? But take a look at yourself, always behind the bar, always pissed off. Anyone would think you were ninety years old!’
‘The bar is our bread and butter, fine, and if you don’t feel like working, then you can bugger off. Clear off, away with you, on your bike, go to dad in Yugoslavia and he’ll give you a decent job, breaking rocks! Go on, a bit of military service would do you the world of good if it wasn’t for your heart murmur. Head murmur, more like.’
‘Oh, go fuck yourself. What do you expect dad to do? We haven’t heard a word from him since March, we don’t even know if he’s still alive! But you don’t give a toss, do you? You’ve got to work, you’re serious, you. ’
Nicola disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom, and Pierre stayed where he was, almost lying on the armchair. He was stiff and tired and he couldn’t feel the right-hand side of his mouth. He was gripped by great sadness, as he was every time he had an argument with his brother. He didn’t hate him, he knew he wasn’t really a bad person. According to aunt Iolanda he was afraid of loving people, afraid that they would leave. However, when he was a little boy, Nicola had seemed like a hero to him, one of the people you boast to other people about: ‘My brother was in the 36th partisan brigade.’ He still remembered that when the Germans had shot his brother he had wept with rage and pride. He had had to have an operation, and since then the pins in his leg had become the indelible mark of the war. As Pierre had grown up, the contrasts between them had come into being. Pierre felt that until he left home that conflict would never be resolved.
So he sat there on the armchair, pressing the handkerchief to his mouth and thinking about where he could go, without a lira, without a passport, and with a knowledge of the world that extended from Modena to Marina di Ravenna.
Chapter 5
Statement made on 8.1.1954 to Police Commissioner Cinquegrana concerning the disappearance of an expensive television set of American manufacture from the military base of the Allied forces in Agnano, Naples
My name is Salvatore Pagano, born in Naples on 21 July 1934. My mother’s name was Carmela, but everyone knew her as Nennella, particularly in the Vergini. The district, I mean. The Vergini district.
I don’t know who my father was, and that’s all I’m saying.
But my friends, the horsemen of Agnano and other friends as well, call me Kociss. Ok, Totore ’a Maronna as well, but mostly Kociss. Don’t you get it? Kociss, with a ‘k’, fine, it’s not a letter we have in our alphabet, but the Americans and the foreigners do. K, I mean. What, don’t you know the great Hungarian footballer Kociss?!
Am I a footballer? No, but it doesn’t matter a damn, number one because I really do know how to play the ball, even though I’m almost twenty, because the way I got the name has nothing to do with the ball, or rather, well, it does, but it’s different. Ok: you know that great team they’ve got in Hungary, who are going to slaughter everyone in the World Cup in Switzerland this year? Ok: they’ve got these players in Hungary and there’s one who scores goals with his head, how can I put it? He’s proverbial. He and Puskas score goals by the cartload, it’s crazy. And this one does almost everything with his head, I’ve never seen anything like it. Kociss.
So, you’ve got to know that, ok, some friends and other friends too, you know how friends are, they muck about, and at the end of the day they call me that because they say that when I’m arguing with some clueless nutter, which hardly ever happens, let’s be clear about that, at the end of the day, the rare occasion when it does happen and we’re just ordinary people if you catch my drift, then the curses are flying and one thing leads to another, if you get my meaning, and anyway when all’s said and done they say I hit them with my head, but it’s only ever happened once, twice at the most, you know what friends are like, and they say that I knock them out, so that’s how I got that name. But that wasn’t what was important, because apart from anything else I’m here to tell you that I had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that wretched nuisance of a television set.
Chapter 6
Palm Springs, California, 18 January