The Dawn of Sin

by Grassetti, Valentino

  "I've had to oil up a lot of ball-sucking leeches. It costed me a bang. But we'll take three percent from any donation made to the toll-free numbers. The lawyers are working on it. We'll make it all perfectly legal."

  "But yeah. "We're skimming off the top even in death" Daisy found bitter, but without really getting upset.

  "The world is cynical, my dear. But you shouldn't talk like that. We'll fill the pockets of fourteen families, remember that."

  "Yes, we'll finance their children's shroud” she said, taking off her bathrobe. Rinaldo turned his head embarrassed. It was the first time he saw her naked. Daisy took a rose from a tall, narrow crystal vase, savoured the pungent scent, and handed it to the record company.

  "I'm going to freshen up and I'll be there."

  Rinaldo watched her walk to the shower, staring at her perfect ass swaying until he felt sick. He loosened up his tie, his face rubbed off, and it slowly faded. Daisy closed the shower door. Rinaldo lingered on the splendid physique filtered through the foggy glass of the shower.

  ʺWho cares. She should fuck young peopleʺ, he thought.

  Daisy got out of the shower after about ten minutes, now demurely wrapped in a pink towel.

  She called Gloria, the opulent hairdresser who followed her on tour. The woman, with her face as dark as an Indian, dried her thick hair, beginning to shape the locks with combs and brushes.

  "So, let's see. Rock Magazine talks intelligently about your career" exclaimed Rinaldo, absorbed in reading a stack of magazines.

  "Here is an article that I find quite interesting. Listen to this passage: Many artists have died because, conscious or not, they chose their own destiny anyway. Drugs, alcohol, suicidal ideals, life without rules. It all started from the inside. They had the unconsciousness of free will. In Daisy Magnoli's case, the opposite is true. It all started from the outside. The case, the circumstances and the coincidences are her alcohol, her drugs, her unregulated fate. As if there was an outside will that could decide for her. The article

  continues with a bit of blah blah blah, and I stop there. So, what do you think?"

  "That you're too enthusiastic."

  "What do you mean?"

  "How much did you pay to get it published?"

  "What's that got to do with it? I..."

  "How much?"

  Rinaldo didn't answer right away. He waited for Gloria to leave. Her hair was fixed, and within a minute she'd be out of the dressing room.

  Daisy looked in the mirror. The soft cut that lay on her shoulders framed an angry face. The girl was not at all satisfied with the work. She insulted the hairdresser, who came out of the room humiliated.

  "So, how much did you pay to have that article written?"

  "Four thousand bucks" he specified.

  "What is this referring about the “external will”? ʺ. It's very clear that someone gave the cue to the paper."

  "All right. Agreed. It's your brother."

  "My brother?"

  "Yes. Adriano said some things, and I was inspired by the article."

  "Would you like to explain?" she said.

  "I heard him talking when we were at your house” Rinaldo explained, scratching the folds of his forehead. "It happened when he was working on that new score. He had a doubt about the attack. I have a lot of flaws, but I studied the music. He didn't know whether to do it with the soprano flute in G, or the alto flute, followed by the oboes, the soprano clarinets in B, before he started with the electronic part. It's a powerful piece, the kind that rocks. I advised him to open it in G. He listened to me. I can't wait to hear it."

  "The piece is finished. Only the text is missing” she said, pouring two fingers of scotch over the glass.

  "Ah, perfect. I said, he was working, when he had one of those strange seizures of his. I know a bit about schizophrenia. I have a brother-in-law who has the same problem. I used to let Adriano talk without giving a damn about all the abstruse stuff he said. He talked a lot about you, though. And something that got stuck in his head. Nonsense talk. He was talking about some kind of monster. A weird fantasy. But Adriano gave it form, life, even a name. And that inspired me for the Rock Magazine article."

  "A... name?"

  "He never told you about it?"

  "I don't know. I'm really confused right now."

  "Anyway, it has a name."

  "What's his name?"

  Outside, the fans had boarded the bus, ready to go home. The vehicles drove through a row of fir trees disappearing into a cold mist that cloaked the moorland around them.

  The perfect curtain of an imperfect night.

  And Rinaldo could not remember the name.

  EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS IN ARMCHAIRS

  by Filippa Villa

  Roberto Salieri is an anonymous hero. A person who sins of confidentiality. We would have liked to interview him, but it wasn't possible. He was there with us the night it all came down.

  For seismologists, the earthquake was a normal telluric movement.

  For some priests, the apocalypse.

  For me, an night of pure terror.

  I carry three things with me about the earthquake.

  Death.

  The shameful homily given by such Don Gino Irroni.

  And the eight line.

  I've talked too much about death.

  I have not spoken enough about life, indeed, the lives saved by Dr. Salieri. I have seen him fixing broken bones, patting wounds, healing and preaching calm while everyone ran away, screaming, crying and searching, but without finding each other. And when they found each other, they cried and wept and despaired even more. Dr. Salieri was there, with his makeshift tourniquets, the rags to stop the bleeding, determined to save lives.

  After four days, during the funeral, a priest scolded him for what he had done. Of course he did it between the lines during a scandalous, famous homily. The earthquake was ‘God's warning’ he thunder from the pulpit. He said it was the right punishment for certain social achievements that the Italian state, with its noses, wanted to grant to those who, like me, that are declared lesbians.

  No one moved from his desk to tell him he was a fucking idiot. Not even the writer. I was outraged, but for the first time in my life, I was a coward. And cowards always shut up.

  It was Dr. Salieri who made his voice heard inside that church where fourteen coffins lay. He rose from the eighth row. I say, the eighth row. He who not only should have stood in front of everyone, he should have stood in front of the front row, even beyond the hypocrite in the front row, sullied by the usual dusty old politicians. Only he could afford to stand in the pulpit and lecture us. It should have

  been Dr. Salieri to comfort the families, saying that everything possible had been done, that God had nothing to do with the tragedy ... and that if the tragedy had to be given a biblical meaning, it had to be said that it was the devil, only the devil, who killed fourteen innocent young people.

  But Dr. Roberto Salieri did more than that. He got up from his bench in the eighth row and turned his back on everyone and left.

  The bishop, at that moment, was clutching the sumptuous gold crucifix, humbly immersed in a prayer with his head down. But he did not miss Dr. Salieri's expression of dissent: he saw him leave, in silence, full of shame.

  The next day, even before the social club was unleashed, Rev. Gino Issori had been removed from his post, transferred to another office, and even deprived of the power to confess.

  ‘Physical or moral impossibility of sufficient ministerial activity.’ That was the motivation.

  That is to say, the good side of the earthquake.

  "Get him out of there, please” Salieri ordered.

  "But Doctor..."

  "Don't push it. You don't know how much trouble that article has caused me" he cut it short.

  The assistant reluctantly took the cut-out off the bulletin board in the waiting room, and huffed, "It's a nice article. You should be proud of it.

  "He should be prou
d of it" he agreed, specifying, "Discretion is an ethical rule. People in my line of work need to keep a low profile. Unfortunately, newspapers live by violating certain principles."

  ʺBut that article filled your webpage with appointmentsʺ thought Greta, who couldn't stand the doctor's tendency to hide the benefits of free advertising.

  To quantify it, the sudden visibility had provided the doctor with fourteen new patients, who multiplied by ninety euros per hour, for at least twenty hours each, made twenty-five thousand two hundred euros of guaranteed minimum benefits.

  Roberto Salieri entered in his office. The journalists who had dug into his life had been impressed by it, calling it a D'Annunzio place, and in a way it really was. His wife had a weakness for him, and it was she who suggested that the studio should smell of art and literature.

  The cleaning lady finished dusting the majolica pots. She said something pleasing about the exquisite scent of the gardenias she had just placed in the vases, and smiled at the courtesy of Roberto Salieri, who said he was sorry for arriving so early, thus disturbing her work.

  The woman, with a few kilos too much and signs of time on her face worn with joy, brightened up the pillows and went out carrying brushes and detergents.

  "Ah, Mrs. Magnoli. Hey, hello Adriano!" exclaimed Salieri when he saw them in the waiting room. She waved without smiling. The doctor was not surprised: no one smiled more willingly in Castelmuso. The quake had proved everyone. Sandra's children had miraculously come out alive from the rubble of the disco. They were unharmed, but wounded inside. And the psychiatrist was in the same condition as them.

  "Come in, Adriano." Salieri opened the door for him, inviting him to take a seat in his study. Adriano, before entering, stared suspiciously into the next room.

  "No cameras today?"

  "No. No filming" the doctor reassured him, knowing that the forty-five minutes of sitting would add nothing to the publication he was about to print. The study of schizophrenia associated with dissociative personality disorder was almost ready. Once published, it would have secured him a

  professorship at Pavia University. A life choice made without regret.

  After so many years, he and his wife were tired of country life. Especially Electra. The woman had never fully adapted to the boredom that accompanied provincial life.

  Salieri turned on the computer, downloaded the emails, and spoke distractedly.

  "About the cameras. I never understood how you discovered them."

  "He tells me everything” replied Adriano in a low, calm voice.

  "What else did he tell you?"

  "He told me about the faggot doctor, and his husband. The same ones who were with her at the disco."

  Adriano was talking with his voice. So it was him, and not the other personality that showed up. It was Adriano who was showing off. It had never happened before, and he was quite surprised.

  "The faggot, as you called him, is Dr. Marco Buccelli. You know him. It's no mystery that he's gay. He's the head physician who treated you at the hospital. What did he do to you?"

  "Nothing. But I know that's what's up his ass."

  "Don't be vulgar. What else did He say to you?"

  "He told me about Dorotea. That poor little bastard, skinned like that, right in the room where I was hospitalized." Salieri began to be less distracted. He tried to work out where the boy was going. He listened carefully, but in one corner of his mind, he continued to think and plan his new life in Lombardy.

  "I also know about your wife, Doctor."

  Salieri barely felt it. He took the notebook and took a bored look at the notes from the previous session.

  ‘Perhaps it is better to live in the centre of Pavia’, Salieri thought. ‘Or I'll buy a cottage. Yes. Perhaps an old country house will be cheaper, especially if it needs renovation.’

  Adriano shook his impatient head. The psychiatrist in the last few sessions was always distracted. That's why he was vulgar. To see if he was listening or not.

  "Look, Dr. Salieri” said Adriano, the tone of someone who had prepared a speech and demanded to be heard.

  "I've been throwing down medicine for years. I've been dazed with medication for most of my life. For years I was considered schizophrenic. Now let me ask you a question. What if I wasn't? What if I was never really sick? Look at me. Look at me when I'm talking, God!"

  Salieri was shaken by Adriano's body. "I'm listening to you, boy" he sketched with an irritation tip.

  "Excuse me, Doctor. I meant no disrespect” said Adriano, irritated in turn. "I'm trying to tell you that there's probably nothing wrong with me. The doctors are wrong. You're wrong, and you're still wrong. I'm not schizophrenic. I don't have any personality disorder. I've tried to listen to you, I've tried to ignore my sick part, but the reality is my illness doesn't exist."

  "That's a peculiar conclusion, yours. We should talk about it” the psychiatrist exclaimed calmly.

  "Of course we should talk about it. The problem is that there is little to say. I'm not ill. I'm sure you're not. The voices I hear are real. I realize perfectly well that all this may sound like madness. But it does. Ever since I was a child, everything I heard and saw was real. Science can't explain it, that's obvious. But He was the one talking. One day he was an old man reading a newspaper, another one, a little girl whining, another one a devil I saw in church. He could be anything, any person. Before me, he was having fun with a poor parish priest. He almost killed him by stabbing him with a crucifix. It happened the day of my sister's accident.

  And Rev. Gino Issori's homily? I'm sure his hand was there as well."

  Salieri listened to him for a while. Then, as was becoming increasingly common, he chased Adriano back into the corner of his brain. His attention span had dropped considerably because the case was now clear and definite. The study was complete.

  He still thought of a country cottage. He imagined a beautiful veranda with wooden beams. Now he was clear in his mind. He wanted a rustic house with a garden, a barn and a stable for Caligula, his horse with its thick mane and camouflaged profile.

  Adriano's voice brought him back to reality.

  "Now He amuses himself by taking my place. Why does he do that? I don't know. Maybe because he has to be near my sister. Who do you think kissed my sister? Him or me? He did. Him, you know? The parasite in my brain is in love with Daisy. She's only just beginning to feel his presence. And I'm afraid she's falling in love, too."

  Salieri took notes, pretending to be careful so as not to irritate him again.

  "Twenty acres of land, a cottage and a pond. Yes, a beautiful pond where the water is brushed by the shadow of willows...”

  He should have consulted a real estate agency. He could have spent around seven hundred thousand euros, but first he would have discussed it with Elettra.

  In front of him, the boy swelled his chest like a rooster ready to fight.

  "There's another thing" he exclaimed, extending his hands to show them to the psychiatrist. "Look. Take a look" he added, drawing imaginary circles in front of his face. "I do not tremble. I do not stutter. I'm more responsive and lucid than ever before. Do you know why?"

  "Um... explain it to me..."

  "Because I'm not taking his fucking meds anymore" said the boy, raising his voice.

  Salieri arched his eyebrows severely. The annoyed air that meant ʺNow you're overreacting, boy.ʺ

  "Wait, doctor. Let me finish!" Adriano lifted a finger to avoid being interrupted.

  "Let me tell you everything I know. He's definitely watching us right now. And he's having fun. But soon he'll take my place, and he'll strike hard. Very hard."

  "Tell me. What do you have to say to me before He comes?" Salieri scribbled a row of question marks on the page.

  "I can prove to you with facts that He exists."

  Salieri squirted an exclamation mark, which he sought several times with a rapid movement of his wrist.

  "He tells me things only you can know, Doctor."
/>
  "Perfect. You have my full attention. Come on, boy, give me an example."

  "Your wife."

  "My... wife?"

  "Yes. He told me about her."

  "Very interesting. "Go on” Salieri encouraged him.

  "He says her name is actually Nicole. Elettra is her middle name."

  Salieri shook his disappointed head. "This is no mystery to anyone. A more convincing argument?"

  "He says Nicole Dubuisson was my father's lover."

  Salieri felt an imperceptible thrill tickling his back. He remained silent. He looked at the young man with a suspicious, inquisitive look. Adriano waited for a reaction. The doctor continued to look him in the eye with haughty superiority, a clear sign that he had been annoyed by his statement.

  The boy felt that he had touched a nerve.

  ‘Well. Now get into the details’, the parasite suddenly said, the voice that sounded peremptory in Adriano's mind.

  "No. Go away, for Christ's sake!" he stirred.

  ‘Do I need to clarify the ideas to the psychiatrist?‘

  "Not now. Let me speak, for God's sake!" said Adriano, raising his hand as if to drive away a cloud of stinging wasps.

  At that moment, the boy managed to capture the doctor's full attention.

  ‘Come on, the moment deserves my presence.’

  "Go away, dammit!" Adriano could add nothing more. The tendons in his neck stretched like strings, his veins swelled in a raging pulse, his lips twitched in a nervous grimace, his eyes lit up like the embers of hell.

  The psychiatrist was once again witnessing what was technically referred to as DID, a dissociative identity disorder. He picked up his cell phone and began recording his conversation with the parasite, who in his essay used to call Him.

  Adriano, red in the face as if he were burning with fever, said, "The boy is no joking. Your wife hates you, Professor Salieri”.

  The psychiatrist listened with renewed attention, hoping that, at that point, something interesting might come out to add to the research.

  ‘Nicole has always hated you. That is why she betrays you. She betrays to punish you. She also punished Paolo Magnoli. While you were at work, Adriano's father walked into your elegant apartment, slipped into bed, stared at the sumptuous canopy surrounded by heavy green satin curtains, and then you know what happened? No? I'll tell you what happened. Your wife came in wearing the pink robe, the one she loved so much because you could see her nipples between the folds of the silk. She'd come in, take off her lace panties and fucked with her lover. Shall I go on?’