He should be standing on Via Roma. Instead of which, he is on Via Toleda.
Behind him, on the opposite pavement, an old shoeshine guy watches him curiously.
Simon knows the shoeshine guy is waiting to see how he will manage to fold his map back up with only one hand.
The old man has a wooden crate, on which he has created a sort of makeshift rack on which customers can wedge their shoes. Simon notes the slope for the heel.
The two men look at each other.
Perplexity reigns on both sides of this Neapolitan street.
Simon does not know exactly where he is. He begins folding the map, slowly but dexterously, never taking his eyes off the old shoeshine guy.
But suddenly the old man points at a spot directly above Simon, who senses that something abnormal is happening because the man’s glum expression changes to one of stupefaction.
Simon looks up just in time to see the pediment above the gallery entrance, a bas-relief representing two cherubs flanking a coat of arms, or something like that, come loose from the façade.
The shoeshine guy tries to yell something, a warning (“Statte accuorto!”) to prevent the tragedy, or at least to participate in it in some way, but no sound emerges from his toothless mouth.
But Simon has changed a lot. He is no longer a library rat about to be crushed by half a ton of white stone, but a one-handed man ranked quite high in the hierarchy of the Logos Club who has cheated death at least three times. Instead of stepping back, as our instinct would prompt us, he has the counterintuitive reflex of pressing his body against the building’s wall, so that the huge block of stone smashes the pavement next to his feet without injuring him.
The shoeshine guy cannot believe it. Simon looks down at the rubble, he looks over at the old man, he looks around him at the petrified pedestrians.
He points at the poor shoeshine guy, but it is not him, of course, he addresses when he declares, aggressively: “If you want to kill me, you’re going to have to try a bit harder than that!” Or maybe the novelist wanted to send him a message? In that case, he’ll have to express himself a bit more clearly, thinks Simon angrily.
98
“It’s last year’s earthquake; it made all the buildings fragile. They could collapse at any moment.”
Simon listens to Bianca explaining why he almost got his skull caved in by a huge chunk of marble.
“San Gennaro—Saint January—stopped the lava during an eruption of Vesuvius and he has been Naples’s protector ever since. Every year, the bishop takes a bit of his dried blood in a glass vial and he keeps turning it upside down until the blood becomes liquid. If the blood dissolves, Naples will be spared misfortune. And what happened last year, do you think?”
“The blood didn’t dissolve.”
“And then the Camorra embezzled millions that the European Commission gave the city because they’re in control of the reconstruction contracts. So of course, they didn’t do anything, or they did such shoddy work that it’s just as dangerous as before. There are accidents all the time. Neapolitans are used to them.”
Simon and Bianca are sipping coffee on the terrace of the Gambrinus, a very touristy literary café and pastry shop that Simon chose for this meeting. He nibbles a rum baba.
Bianca explains that the expression “See Naples and die” (vedi Napoli e poi muori; in Latin, videre Neapolim et Mori) is in fact a play on words: Mori is a small town near Naples.
She also tells him the history of the pizza: one day, Queen Margherita, married to the king of Italy, Umberto I, discovered this popular meal and made it famous throughout Italy. In tribute, a pizza was named after her, the one containing the colors of the national flag: green (basil), white (mozzarella), and red (tomato).
Up to now, she has not asked a single question about his hand.
A white Fiat double-parks near them.
Bianca becomes more and more animated. She starts talking politics. She tells Simon again about the hatred she feels for bourgeois people who hoard all the wealth and starve the people. “Can you believe it, Simon? Some of those bourgeois bastards spend hundreds of thousands of lire just to buy a handbag. A handbag, Simon!”
Two young men get out of the white Fiat and sit on the terrace. They are joined by a third, a biker who parks his Triumph on the pavement. Bianca can’t see them because they are behind her back. It is the scarf gang from Bologna.
If Simon is surprised to see them here, he doesn’t show it.
Bianca sobs with rage, thinking about the excesses of the Italian middle classes. She heaps insults on Reagan. She is suspicious of Mitterrand because, on that side of the Alps as on this one, the socialists are always traitors. Bettino Craxi is a piece of shit. They all deserve to die, and she would happily execute them herself given the chance. The world seems infinitely dark to her, thinks Simon, who cannot really claim she is wrong.
The three young men have ordered beers and lit cigarettes when another character arrives, already known to Simon: his Venice opponent, the man who mutilated him, flanked by two bodyguards.
Simon leans over his rum baba, hiding his face. The man shakes hands like a VIP, a local elected official or a high-ranking Camorra member (the distinction is often not very clear, here). He disappears inside the café.
Bianca spits on Forlani and his Pentapartito government. Simon worries that she is having a nervous breakdown. Attempting to calm her, he utters some soothing words—“come on, not everything’s that bad, think about Nicaragua…”—and moves his hand under the table to rest on her knee, but through the fabric of Bianca’s trouser leg he touches something hard that is not flesh.
Bianca, startled, abruptly pulls her leg beneath her chair. She immediately stops sobbing. She stares at Simon, defiant and imploring at the same time. There is rage, anger, and love in her tears.
Simon says nothing. So, that’s how it is: a happy ending. The one-handed man and the one-legged girl. And, as in all good stories, some guilt to drag around with him: if Bianca lost her leg at Bologna Central, it was his fault. If she had never met him, she would have two legs and would still be able to wear skirts.
But then again, they would also not form this touching handicapped couple. Will they marry and make lots of little Leftists?
Except that this is not the final scene that he had in mind.
Yes, while visiting Naples, he wanted to see Bianca, the young woman he fucked on a dissecting table in Bologna, but right now he has other plans.
Simon makes an imperceptible nod to one of the young men in scarves.
The three of them stand up, put their scarves over their mouths, and enter the café.
Simon and Bianca exchange a long look, communicating an infinity of messages, stories, and emotions, of the past, the present, and, already, the conditional past (the worst of all, the tense of regrets).
The sound of two gunshots. Screams and confusion.
The gang emerge, pushing Simon’s opponent forward. One of the three has his P38 wedged in the lower back of the important Camorra member. Another sweeps the terrace with his, threatening the shocked clientele.
As he passes Simon, the third gang member puts something on the table, which Simon covers with his napkin.
They shove the Camorra guy in the back of the Fiat and speed off.
There is panic in the café. Simon listens to the screams from inside and understands that the two bodyguards are injured. Each one has a bullet in his leg, as planned.
Simon says to the frightened-looking Bianca: “Come with me.”
He leads her over to the third man’s motorbike and hands her the napkin, inside which is a key. He says to Bianca: “Drive.”