Naturally the Soviet authorities denied the whole thing. They couldn't admit to the world that some of their most glorious athletes had escaped, repudiating Communism and their own country. They unleashed the secret services on a hunt to find them and make them pay. For years the agents searched for them all over the world. Nothing. It was like looking for a hole in water. They appeared to have melted away, as if a Western country had helped them to disappear without a trace.
As we've already mentioned, the subsoil of Villa Ada is criss-crossed with the ancient Catacomb of Priscilla: more than fourteen kilometres of tunnels and cubicles dug into the tuff rock, divided into three floors packed full of ancient remains of Christians. The underground necropolis's name comes from a Roman woman Priscilla, born in the second half of the second century AD. It appears that the woman donated the land to the Christians, who dug their cemetery there.
That's where Arkadij and the company of dissidents hid. After having scoured the necropolis from top to bottom, they set up their living quarters on the deepest level, more than fifty metres below the earth's surface. That area, cool in summer and warm in winter, had been explored, mapped out and then closed to the public and forgotten. The tourists only visited a part of the first floor, in the area in front of the Convent of the Benedictine Nuns.
The Russians, during night time when the park was closed, would climb up the tunnels and go outside in search of food. Their nutrition was principally based on what the Romans abandoned during the daytime: leftover panini, fried food, potato chips and Cipster, snacks and the dregs left in Coke cans. Their economy was substantially based on rubbish collection. Similar, in a way, to the gatherers of the Paleolithic era. They wore tracksuits, sweatshirts and caps that people absentmindedly left behind on the lawns or lost at the fitness tracks. Ethnologists might compare the relationship established between the Soviet athletes and the Romans to the symbiosis that exists between hippopotamus and herons. These splendid birds live off the back of the huge mammals, feeding themselves on the parasites on the skin. In the same way the Romans always found the Villa clean and tidy, and the Russians found food and clothes.
Inside the tunnels of the catacomb the small community began to breed and it slowly grew. Obviously, considering the fact that the population was small, crossbreeding between blood relatives happened regularly, generating an uncontrolled and accelerated genetic drift. Even the hypogeous lifestyle, in the darkness of the tunnels, and a diet rich in carbohydrates and fats contributed to transforming them morphologically. New generations were obese, with serious dental problems, and very pale skin. On the other hand, they were able to see in the dark and, being direct descendents of athletes, they were extremely agile and strong.
It sounds unbelievable, but in almost fifty years nobody noticed their presence. Except for the bin men and maintenance workers of Villa Ada, who told of the legend of the Mole Men. It was said that at night they came out of the air holes of the catacomb and cleaned up all the rubbish in the park, freeing them of the bulk of the work. There were others who swore to have seen them jumping from one tree to another, performing amazing acrobatics. But it sounded like just another urban myth.
The sale of the park to Chiatti broke the delicate balance between the park and its underground guests.
From one day to the next, the Russians no longer found the bins overflowing with leftover food. And slowly the park had been repopulated with wild beasts. As they were not hunters but gatherers, and had developed a metabolism that required constant intakes of glucose and cholesterol, the dwellers of the catacomb began to suffer and feel sick, feeding as they must on mice, insects and other small animals.
Breaking the ancient and hard-and-fast rule that they had imposed on themselves when they'd entered into the catacomb, which forbade them from going into the open during the day, the old king Arkadij sent a small squad of explorers armed with sunglasses and led by his son Ossacatogna to find out what the hell was happening inside the park.
When the explorers returned, they reported that the park had been closed and had become a sort of private zoo for the amusement of a very powerful man, who was organising a big party.
The council of Old Athletes was immediately convened, governed also by the king, who was now totally blind and ravaged by psoriasis. He knew what was happening: exactly what he had always feared during fifty years of underground living. The Soviet Empire had finally triumphed, its armies had invaded Italy, and now Communism reigned the whole planet undisputed.
That park had most certainly become the residence of a bureaucrat, a Party bigwig, and the party was a celebration for the Soviet victory.
‘What do we have to do, father?’ Ossacatogna asked.
The king took a couple of minutes to think before answering. ‘During the night of the celebration, we will show ourselves. We'll attack the Soviets, and we will take what we need to survive.’
Concert by Larita in Villa Ada
62
Sasà Chiatti, in a satin robe, striped boxer shorts and infrared glasses, was standing at the centre of the terrace of the Royal Villa. With his right arm he was holding on tight to a gold-plated TAR-21 assault rifle with a Swarovski crystal-studded butt, and in his left an M79 grenade-launcher with an alabaster butt and a silver-plated barrel. In between his teeth he held a Cobina Behike cigar, rolled by the able hands of the Cuban torcedora Norma Fernández.
He walked over to the big staircase that led down to the garden, and opened his arms wide in greeting. ‘Welcome to the party.’
He never thought that they would have the guts to show up on the day of his incoronation. He had been naïve not to consider it. It was obvious. Like that, in front of everyone, his downfall would have been complete and conclusive. A warning to all those who tried to think and act for themselves.
He walked down a couple of steps, fired at the hard liquor table and sent it into thousands of pieces. ‘Here I am. Come on, show me what you've got’ he screamed in the green night of his goggles.
He felt like laughing. They were coming to punish him because he had dared to rise up, because he had shown everyone that even a poor boy, son of a humble mechanic from Mondragone, had become, thanks to his entrepreneurial skills, one of the richest men in Europe. Because he had given work to the unemployed and hope to a heap of desperate losers. Because he had revved the engine of the economy of this fucked-up country.
That sainted woman his mother, she hadn't studied but she was smart, had warned him. ‘Savlato, sooner or later they'll find a way to fuck you over. They will band together and drown you in shit.’
For years Sasà Chiatti had slept in fear, awaiting that moment. He had hired troupes of lawyers, accountants, economists. He had had a wall built around the Villa to defend himself, he had had an underground bunker excavated to hide out in, recruited Israeli bodyguards and armour-plated his automobiles.
It hadn't changed a fucking thing. They'd got to him, anyway. They had sabotaged his power station, they had ruined his party, and now they wanted to finish him off.
Through the night-vision goggles he saw a couple of them, nice big ones, running around the buffet leftovers with bags full of food. ‘You losers. Do you want to hear something interesting? I'm glad that we can finally end this stand-off.’ He loaded the grenade-launcher. ‘And do you want to hear another interesting thing? The party, the guests, the VIPs can all go and get fucked, kill them all. And I don't even give a shit about this crap old Villa. Destroy it. You want war? You've got war.’ And he blew up the big water fountain. Marble shrapnel, water and water lilies were sent flying over tens of metres.
He walked down another three steps. ‘Do you want to know who the fuck I am? Do you want to know how the fuck a lowlife from Mondragone can afford to buy Villa Ada? Let me tell you now. I'm going to show you all who Sasà Chiatti is when you piss him off.’ He began to sweep through the buffet tables with the machine gun. The plates of truffle tartines, trays of chicken nuggets and carafes full of Bellini disintegrated und
er the gunfire. The tables fell to the ground riddled with gunshots.
It was a beautiful feeling. The machine gun had warmed up and was burning his hand. As he was pulling another magazine out of the pocket of his robe and replacing the empty one, he thought back to the book he had read about Greek heroes.
There was one guy he admired in particular, Agamemnon. In the film Troy, he was played by a really good actor whose name he couldn't remember. The Greek hero had beaten the Trojans and he'd taken Chryseis, a nice piece of skirt, as a war prize. One of the gods, an important one, one of Zeus's helpers, had offered him a shitload of cash in exchange for the girl, but Agamemnon hadn't accepted. Agamemnon wasn't scared of the gods. And the gods had taken their revenge, and unleashed a terrible pestilence on his camp.
‘This is your vendetta . . .’ He looked up towards the greenish sky. ‘Except that the Greek gods were great and powerful. The Italian ones are miserable. You've sent these fat gits to kill me.’ He took aim at a sort of molosser that was dragging a big bag full of drinks away, and he sent it crashing to the ground.
He came to the bottom of the staircase. ‘Should that be democracy's goal? An opportunity for everyone?’ Chiatti, with a flick of his arm, reloaded the grenade-launcher. ‘Cop this opportunity to get the fuck out of here.’ And he blew up a fatso carrying an entire roast pig on his shoulders.
‘You greasy lowlifes . . . Viva Italia!’ He spat the cigar from his mouth and began running and wildly shooting, cutting down these obese killers. ‘Fratelli d'Italia, l'Italia s’è desta . . .’ he sang, while the cartridge cases from the TAR-21 were splattering all over the place. ‘Dell'elmo di Scipio si è cinta la testa . . .’ He hit one, its skull opening like a ripe watermelon.
‘Idiots, you haven't even got any weapons! Who the fuck do you think you are to come in here like that? You're not immortal. Tell the people who sent you that it takes more than that to kill off Sasà Chiatti.’ He stopped to catch his breath, then he burst into laughter. ‘I think you won't be able to tell them a bloody thing, you'll all be blown to smithereens.’ He stuck in another grenade and slammed the Algida ice cream Apecar. It caused an explosion that, for a second, lit up the Italian-style garden, the boxwood maze, the information gazebo and the hunting tents as if it were daytime. The front tyre of the three-wheeler Apecar popped out of the fireball, overtook the tables with the aperitifs, the remains of the fountain and the hydrangea flowerbed, and hit the real-estate magnate on the forehead.
Sasà Chiatti and his ninety kilos wobbled, and seemed to withstand the impact; but then, like a skyscraper whose foundations have been undermined, he fell back. While the world around him was being overturned, he pulled the trigger of the machine gun with his index finger and shot off the tip of his blue velvet slippers with his initials embroidered in gold thread. Inside were four toes and a fair bit of his foot.
He ended up on the ground, hitting his head on the corner of a glass table on the way down. A long triangular sliver stuck into his neck just above the nape, cut through the periosteum, the dura mater, the arachnoid, the pia mater and through the soft tissue of the brain like a sharp blade through a Danone vanilla pudding.
‘Ahhhh . . . Ahhhh . . . Owwwww . . . You've got me,’ he managed to mumble, before vomiting the semi-digested remains of the matriciana rigatoni and the meatballs with pine nuts and sultanas all over himself.
With the crooked night-vision goggles, he studied what was left of the tip of his left leg. The stump, a mass of raw flesh and bits of bone, was leaking a dark-green liquid like a threadless tap. The real-estate magnate stretched out one hand, grabbed a table cloth from an overturned coffee table and wrapped the injury as best he could. Then he grabbed a bottle of Amaro Averna liqueur and necked a quarter of it.
‘You arseholes. You think you've hurt me? You're wrong. Come on, surprise me, show me what you can do. Here I am.’
He gestured with his fingers for them to bring it on. He grabbed the machine gun and kept shooting around until there was nothing left to shoot. He was quiet for a moment, and then he noticed that his neck and shoulders were soaked in blood. He touched the back of his neck. Felt a piece of glass sticking out of his hair. He grabbed it with his thumb and index finger and tried to extract it, but it slipped his grasp. Gulping for air, he tried again, and as soon as he moved it a pink flash blinded his left eye.
He decided to leave it there and collapsed against the rest of the ice sculpture of an angel. Then, with the little strength that he had left, he necked the rest of the liqueur, tasting the bittersweet flavour of the Averna mixed with the salty flavour of his blood. ‘You haven't fucking hurt me . . . You haven't . . . A conspiracy of dickheads.’ The head of the angel and the melted stubs of the wings were dripping a frozen rain that dribbled down his smooth skull and into the infrared goggles, down his chubby cheeks and onto the swollen stomach, the robe, and finally watered down the puddle of blood he was sinking in.
Death was cold. An ice octopus had wrapped its frozen tentacles around his spinal column.
He thought of his mother again. He would have liked to have told her that her little chiappariello loved her, and that he'd been a good boy. But he had no air left in his lungs. Luckily, he'd hidden her away in the bunker.
Fucking hell . . . , he said, ironing out a smile. It was nice to go like this. Like a hero. Like a Greek hero in a battle. Like the great Agamemnon, the king of the Greeks.
He was sleepy and felt exhausted. How strange, his foot didn't hurt any more. His head wasn't throbbing any more either, it was lighter. He felt like he'd risen out of his body and was watching himself.
Right there, collapsed beneath a melting angel.
His head fell onto his chest. The bottle slipped between his legs. He looked at his hands. He opened them and closed them.
My hands. These are my hands.
In the end, they had won.
They who?
Salvatore Chiatti fell asleep with a question to carry into the hereafter.
63
Fabrizio Ciba regained consciousness like he was coming out of a bottomless well. With his eyes closed, he stayed curled up in a foetal position, swallowing and spitting air. He remembered the darkness and the bunch of fat bastards hanging from the trees.
They've kidnapped me.
He kept still, without opening his eyes, until his heart began to slow down. He was aching from his toes to the tips of his hair. As soon as he moved, an unbearable pain streamed along his shoulders . . .
That's where it hit me.
(Don't think about it.)
. . . and through his neck muscles, radiating out like an electric shock behind the ears and up to his temples. His tongue was so swollen that it struggled to stay inside his mouth.
They fell from the trees.
(Don't think about it.)
Right, he shouldn't think about it. He just had to stay still and wait for the pain to pass.
I have to think about something pretty.
All right, he was in Nairobi, lying on a bed. The linen curtains were moved by a warm wind. Beside him was Larita, naked, vaccinating Kenyan kids.
Where's Larita?
(Don't think about it.)
Soon he would get up and he'd take a Nimesulide pill and squeeze himself a nice fresh grapefruit juice.
It's not working.
He was lying on ground that was too hard and cold to allow him to fantastise.
He placed a hand on the ground. The floor was wet, and felt like it was made of pressed dirt.
Don't open your eyes.
He'd have to open them sooner or later, and find out where the monster had taken him. At the moment it was better to wait. He felt too shit and he didn't want other ugly surprises. He preferred to stay there, behave, and imagine Africa.
But there was a strange smell of damp that made him feel nauseous. It reminded him of the odour in the cellar dug out of the tuff rock in his uncle's house in Pitigliano. And it was cold, just like there.
I'm underground. There were at least five of them in that tree. They've kidnapped me. It was a ploy just to kidnap me.
A group of obese terrorists had swung down from the trees and kidnapped him.
Slowly at first, then more and more quickly, his brain began to elaborate this mad idea, to knead it and let it rise like a piece of dough for making pizza. And he would bet his bottom dollar that the kidnapping had been coordinated by that son of a bitch Sasà Chiatti, a real mafioso who colluded with the powerful. The party, the safaris, were all a smoke screen to hide a global plan to get rid of a troublesome intellectual who pointed his finger at the moral downfall of society.
It's obvious, they want to make me pay for it.
Throughout his whole career he had exposed himself, uncaring of the consequences, against the hidden powers. He considered it to be the civil duty of a writer. He had written a fiery article against the Finnish woodcutting lobbies that scythed down thousand-year-old forests. Those big beasts that had kidnapped him could very well be an extremist phalanx of Finns.
Another time he had openly declared in the Corriere della Sera that Chinese cuisine was crap. And everyone knows that the Chinese are a mafia, and they don't let anyone who has the courage to attack them publicly go unpunished.
Of course, those colossuses were a little too beefy to be Chinese . . .
What about if they'd united with Finnish woodcutters?
Salman Rushdie and the Islamic fatwa came to mind.
And now they'll execute me.
Well, if that's how it went, at least it would be a death that guaranteed him being remembered as a martyr for the truth.
Like Giordano Bruno.
He was so caught up with unwinding himself from the tangle in his mind that the writer didn't realise he wasn't alone until he heard a voice.
‘Ciba? Can you hear me? Are you still alive?’
It was a low voice, almost a whisper. It came from behind him. A voice that had an annoying inability to pronounce its r's properly. A voice that annoyed the shit out of him.
Let the Games Begin Page 24