Five minutes. A glance at Sport Illustrato to bring down the tension. Nesti, pugnacious and resolute, has given his all on the field, shone with his staying power and effective.
‘Oi! I’m off, I’m going to Franco’s to see the first half, then I’ll be back.’
‘I’m coming with you, off we go, then, let’s see if there are any seats left.’
‘What did I tell you? Not to trust that bald guy?’ Garibaldi’s tone is getting heavy.
. He has often thrown himself into the attack and has made many passes to the forwards, skilfully demonstrating his.
‘So?’
‘I want my 5,000 lire back, what is this nonsense?’
‘Don’t say a word!’ Garibaldi is getting agitated. ‘It’s all the fault of that good-for-nothing.’ He points at Gas, beside the door. ‘He’s the one who swindled us.’
Four o’clock precisely. Now. It’s starting now.
‘How’s it my fault? What did I know? Why are you getting on my case?’
Melega grabs the entrepreneur by the knot of his tie and pins him to the wall.
Garibaldi brings his face right up to Gas’s face, or rather to his chin, and starts bellowing. ‘And it’s always the same story! Nothing but swindling, you’d cheat your friends, even your own mother! Criminal! Bum!’
The Bar Aurora empties. Some leave contemptuously, some quietly, some running, some shaking their heads. Only a few of us are left, unsure which is worth more: Italy — Belgium, or seeing Gas getting beaten up.
Capponi pushes his way through the chairs, followed by his brother. Furious expressions.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Gas. Did you see how many people there were? Who’s going to talk to Benassi now? You?’
‘Talk?’ Bortolotti intervenes. ‘No talking! If I were you, Capponi, I’d get a refund. And this guy here will have to find another television as soon as possible.’
‘Another one?’ Gas protests. ‘And where am I going to find one at that price? It was a special offer, an extraordinary price.’
‘You’ll find one, off you go,’ Melega’s finger stops just short of his eye. ‘Otherwise we’ll come and get you.’
And a moment after our cowboy’s threat, the voice of the radio commentator imposes a truce.
Chapter 36
Bologna, 22 June
‘I regret to be a bad student.’ Pierre remarked after his umpteenth mistake.
Fanti smiled, sipped his tea and corrected error umpteen plus one: ‘Wouldn’t it be better to say, I regret that I’m a bad student?’
Pierre hid his face in his hands. ‘It’s all of a piece, professore. I can’t even manage to say how bad a student I am.’
‘Right. And I’d be a lousy teacher if I couldn’t tell that it isn’t your day.’
‘Unfortunately it isn’t just a matter of days, professore. ’
With his usual savoir faire, Fanti avoided direct questions. He did nothing more than pour the tea, sniff it, sip it with a vacant expression. He could put you at your ease with the most simple and ordinary gestures, never overdoing it. If you wanted to speak, he was ready to listen to you. If you wanted a piece of advice, he was ready to give it. Provided that the silence was tamed by the fakirs of jazz, and he didn’t have to clean the pigeon-loft and tend to the birds.
The oolong tea, with its hazelnut aftertaste, satisfied the palate. The swing orchestra satisfied the ears. Pierre’s thoughts were drying up. His father, Ettore, Montroni, Angela. He hadn’t talked to anyone, not even the musketeers, who had now stopped taking him along to the dancehall. It was as though no one could understand so intricate a situation; he could at best have enjoyed a bit of bar room chat, and thanks very much. No one could help him. He didn’t like going around the place telling everyone his business. Angela said it was nothing but pride. Pierre called it dignity. Ok fine, a bit of pride, but not only that. It was just that nine times out of ten you knew in advance how people were going to react: someone would feel sorry for you, and you regretted not keeping your mouth shut; someone else would suggest distractions, women, wine, a night on the town, without understanding that when you’re ready for those things it means either you’ve recovered or you’re in the final stages, and it’s the in between that makes you feel bad; yet another would start telling you his own problems, and you weren’t in the frame of mind to listen; the worst of all told you it was nothing, or treated you like a fool if you didn’t think their advice was utterly fantastic.
Having said that, sometimes pouring your heart out was a good idea, if you had the right person to do it with. The hard thing was knowing where to start.
‘My father wants to come back to Italy,’ he said finally, turning back to his cup. ‘And he asked me to look into the question, but it doesn’t strike me as such a good idea. What can I do for him? I’ve been through the mill myself over the last couple of months. If I could, I’d love a change of air as well.’
He stopped for a moment and glanced at the flowers on the terrace. It gave him a new starting point.
He started with Angela. He explained about Fefe and Montroni, leaving out hardly anything, as though looking into a mirror. As though Fanti had melted away among the notes of Woody Herman and the vapour from the teapot.
‘And it isn’t over yet, the best is still to come: to pay the people who took me to Yugoslavia, I let them use the cellar of the bar as a storeroom for some American cigarettes. Contraband, in short. Angela’s husband found out, because he was keeping an eye on me and he wanted the police to get me. Except she heard him talking on the phone and came and told me. I barely had time to sort things out. Then Angela asked me a big favour, and at that point there was no way I could say no. She wanted me to creep into Montroni’s clinic, to see if there was a file there with his signature where it said that Ferruccio had to stop taking that medication of his. I did it, and the signature was there. Now she’s going to have a furious row with her husband, and he in turn will be furious with me, out of jealousy, and apparently he knows about Yugoslavia as well, and who knows what else he’ll be able to get out of it, he’s a big cheese in the Party, and even if he talks balls people believe him.’
In spite of everything, Fanti’s face showed a certain amazement.
Partly because of the things he had heard and partly because he wasn’t sure he had grasped all the plot lines. He sat there with his chin in his hand, almost motionless, until he was sure that Pierre had nothing else to add.
‘So your father decided to come back at the worst possible moment.’
‘I’d say so. And yet he’s had plenty time to make his mind up.’
‘Yeah, but things were different in those days.’
‘For me too, I assure you. And my father isn’t stupid: if all of a sudden he asks me to think about him coming back, it means he’s in a very bad way. He knows as well as anyone that there’s not much I can do for him.’
‘A moment ago you said you’d be happy to have a change of air.’
As usual, Fanti avoided direct questions, or rather he threw back at you what you had already said, he made you explain it and analyse it more deeply.
‘Yes, sir, if I could, I would go away, out of Italy. Didn’t you say that journeys mean change? When you’re in a tight spot you always regret your inability to fly.’
‘Why, can’t you?’
‘And how am I going to go about it? You’ve travelled all over the place, to you it seems like the most natural thing in the world for someone simply to pull up roots and leave. But I have a thousand problems: I don’t know where to go, I have no money to get there, and the only passport I have is fake. And on top of that I’ve got a father to help, he hasn’t got a penny either, he’s got a sentence to serve in Italy and Tito’s political police are hot on his heels. What else do you want?’