“Talk!” Whap! A smack from his mother. “Who is it that’s hurting you?” she insisted.
“Mammà, what if it was meant for Papà instead of me?” Drone started insinuating the shadow of doubt.
His sister asked him questions, pretending she knew nothing: “But who was it? What happened?” she asked as they climbed the stairs.
And at that point their father had been persuaded by his son that the graffito might actually be about him. He’d made him think about his last construction projects, perhaps he’d been too quick to heap blame on his son, he knew that the boy was spending time with a group of kids he didn’t like, but what about the construction sites where he worked? Could it have been them? Drone saw him making calls on his cell phone, asking around, and, in the face of his father’s fear, he collapsed. He didn’t have the temperament of the camorrista that he aspired to be. In the stairwell, while his mother and sister were taking the elevator, he told his father that he needed to talk to him: “Papà, t’aggi’ ’a parlà.” When they caught up with Annalisa, who had just arrived at the landing, she stepped out of the elevator and said: “Antò, I didn’t tell you, I made up my mind: you’re right, we need to do what Nicolas says.”
Their father asked: “Why did you utter that boy’s name?”
“Nothing … Nicolas…”
“And what does Nicolas want?”
Drone was motionless. Has she lost her mind? he thought. Does she want to talk about the bukkake in front of Papà?
“Nicolas said that we all need to start a website, and that I need to be part of it,” Annalisa replied.
“A website? About? What a filthy pig of a man he is?” her father commented.
“No, no … He’s right, a website where we write about some of the things that happen in the quarter. Maybe we’ll even be able to sell a little advertising … These days, people want to read about the things that happen in the street where they live. Not the things that are happening in Rome, Milan, and Paris.”
Drone started breathing again, but he wasn’t sure his sister hadn’t really lost her mind.
Annalisa had understood, in the blink of an eye, that Drone had collapsed, that her father was going to wind up in a sea of trouble by reporting the paranza to the police to make sure the punishment never took place. They might have to move away for a while and they’d never call him back to work on construction sites as an engineer again. It was better to just shut up and obey.
Drone ate dinner without another word, and then went into his sister’s bedroom: “Annali’, are you serious about this?”
“Well, yeah, I have to. There’s nothing else left for us to do … or should we go in and shoot them?”
“I’m all for it! You want to shoot? I’m in.”
“If you shoot them, the ones who pay would be Papà, Mamma, and even me.”
Drone stood staring down at his feet; on the one hand he was relieved, on the other, disgusted. It revolted him that he had been so weak. In his head he reran the images that had tormented him for days: the pistol stolen in secrecy along with the bullets, the few hours that he’d slept with the gun, and when he’d pulled it out to start shooting at the police car.
Annalisa took the telephone, made the call. Then she said, in a flat voice: “Nicolas, this is Annalisa. Okay. Organize this piece of filth, and let’s get this guilt off my brother.”
Drone started shouting “No!” and kicking and punching, destroying his consoles, he swept all of his drones off the lower shelf with one hand, and not even the sound of splintering wings distracted him from his fury. His father and mother came running in. “What was that?”
Annalisa knew he needed to shield her parents from the truth: “No, it was nothing. We just found out that the Mariuolo was meant for him.”
“So you see? All right, explain,” the parents demanded.
“I’m too pissed off,” Drone retorted.
“Yeah … his friends accused him of stealing some files … But it wasn’t him, it was someone else.”
“Oh, well, you can explain what happened, can’t you?” asked their mother.
“What explanation? Chistu ccà più frequenta sta munnezza, peggio è,” the father replied. “The more this one hangs out with garbage, munnezza, the worse he gets. He’ll become munnezza just like them, I’ve always said it.”
That was the phrase that broke Drone: “Si’ tu ’a munnezza,” he spat out. No, you’re the garbage. His father was tempted to retort, “How dare you?”: the phrase that attracts discord like a magnet. He said nothing, but he was deeply hurt. “Si’ tu ’a munnezza. Always doing nothing but contriving to get more work. Always saying that your friends are better than mine. Always something we don’t have.”
“You never went without anything, you never had to do without.”
“Who told you that?”
Annalisa and her mother watched the clash. With every phrase the voices grew louder, and so did the fear that their neighbors might hear.
“Shut up, the two of you, that’s enough,” broke in the mother.
Father and son froze in position. Nose to nose. They breathed on each other and neither one would step back. Annalisa grabbed her brother by the shoulders, and the mother grabbed her husband. They separated them: one of them holed up in his bedroom, now in shambles, the other behind a door that had become an impenetrable wall.
* * *
Annalisa prepared her backpack, came out of the bathroom, and said: “I’m ready.”
“Why the backpack?” Drone asked in a dry voice.
“Because I have my things in it.”
“What things?”
She said nothing. Drone had a bitter taste in his mouth, his breath was foul as if his tongue had been smeared with mud all night long, the slime that rose from and oozed back down into his esophagus. He hadn’t been able to save anyone. He had no power to do anything, against or in favor, and yet he was convinced, as was everyone else, that being admitted into the paranza would mean becoming something more, more than himself. But instead now he had to remain inert, helpless.
“Cheer up!” Annalisa went on. Now she was the one encouraging him. He was annoyed, and at this point his biggest fear was that his sister might actually like such a thing. But Annalisa wanted nothing so much as to get out of this situation as soon as possible.
They went downstairs and got on the motor scooter. Drone was driving, she was sitting behind him. They showed up on Via dei Carbonari, where the entire paranza already was. They knocked at the door.
Nicolas answered: “’O Dro’, don’t you have the key? Why did you knock?”
Drone said nothing. He just walked in, he was no longer willing to use the key. He went over and sprawled out on the sofa.
“Ciao, Annali’.” Dozens of “ciaos” echoed through the room, like a “buongiorno” in a high school classroom when the teacher comes in. They were all beside themselves with excitement, but actually very worried.
“All right,” said Annalisa, “let’s get moving, and be done with this song and dance as quick as we can.”
“Ehh,” said Maraja, “as quick as we can … take it easy, now.” And he lifted one hand into the air, waving it as if conducting a symphony, indicating that he was the director of this scene.
“Well, what a responsible sister you are. Not a bit like your brother, Antonio.”
“I’ve heard enough about that,” Annalisa replied.
Drago’ just couldn’t resign himself and said: “Oh, Maraja, but do you really have to do this thing? Ja’, he understands that he fucked up. But what the hell does Annalisa have to do with it?”
“Drago’,” Maraja replied, “shut your yap.”
Drago’ didn’t appreciate that: “I’ll talk whenever the fuck I please! All the more because this is my house.”
“No, this house belongs to all of us. It’s your house, too. Now it’s the paranza’s house. And anyway, it’s not as if just because you repeat something a hundred times, the
first time it doesn’t work and the hundredth time it does. It doesn’t work one hundred times in a row.”
“It strikes me as overdoing it. It’s just Drone who fucked up.”
“Not again?” Nicolas said. “You don’t want to pull out your fish. Then keep it in your pants. Done. Nothing more to say.”
“We’re sick of you, Drago’!” said Dentino.
Drago’ shot a glance at Annalisa as if to say that there was nothing more he could do. On her part there was no hint of gratitude for his effort: the disgust that she felt for the paranza was all-encompassing. She went into the bathroom and, in the course of a few minutes, came out again dressed like a porn star. The paranza had never laid eyes on such plenty, such sensuality. Or rather, they’d seen it on YouPorn, on the countless channels of PornHub, the source of their only sentimental education, grown up as they had with laptops as extensions of their arms. Annalisa had figured out that she needed to present herself as an online video porno heroine. It would make it all that much faster.
There they all were. All of them in the room seemed to be lined up and arranged for a group photo, the short ones in front, the others behind them, and at the center, the moon-calf face of Biscottino. The schoolmistress had arrived. The class stood to attention. For a few seconds, they all felt sized up, passed in review. Some of them sniffed, others adjusted their T-shirts, some stuck their hands in their pockets in search of who knows what. Seen this way, across the distance that had been created with Annalisa’s entrance, they looked like what they really were, a bunch of little kids. For that same long, drawn-out instant each of them seemed to answer for himself, there was no more group, no paranza, no punishment. The schoolmistress had come in to ask each of them what they would be capable of. For that indeterminate moment, in which they returned to their own faces, they were pushed out over a sort of void where they were defenseless or, more likely, aghast, their shoelaces untied, their thoughts astray, their eyes uncertain whether to stay still or dart away in flight.
But then there was a click, and everything went back to where it was supposed to be. Annalisa, who could never have experienced that wave of disorientation, kneeled down in front of Nicolas.
When it seemed as if Annalisa was about to begin, Drone looked down at his feet, put the earbuds into his ears, and turned the music up to full volume so he wouldn’t have to hear a sound. But Maraja stopped her then and there.
“Drone, ’o Drone!” shouted Nicolas, forcing him to take out the earbuds and look up at him. “So you see what happens when you fuck the paranza? Then the paranza fucks you and all your blood. Get up, Annali’, go and get dressed.”
“No-o-o, not really!” Pesce Moscio, excited as he was, couldn’t hold back.
“Uaaa’,” said Biscottino, “no-o-o.”
Drone would have liked to give him a hug, as if the lesson imparted had dropped onto him with its full weight. Nicolas, from the majesty of his sixteen years, felt so old and wise that he would gladly have let his hands be kissed; he wished his jaws were swollen like Marlon Brando’s, Don Vito Corleone’s, but he had to settle for the disappointed gazes of the paranza, Annalisa’s astonished expression, and Drone’s motionless gratitude, incapable as he was of speaking or even just modifying the incredulous expression that had taken over his face. It had all been a staged event. And Nicolas adored staged events, he felt as if he were writing the screenplay of his power.
Annalisa stood face-to-face with Nicolas, she was roughly the same height as him. She looked at him as if he emanated some repugnant odor, then uttered slowly and clearly: “You’re all filthy pigs, including my brother.” She breathed deeply. “But now you have to leave him alone: the guilt is removed.”
No one ventured to respond.
Annalisa walked over even closer to Nicolas. “The guilt is removed, right? Say it!”
“It’s removed, it’s removed … Drone is in the paranza.”
“Quite the privilege…” said Annalisa and, turning her back on them, she went into the bathroom to get dressed again.
The kids, standing in a circle, kept their eyes glued to her ass until she vanished behind the bathroom door. Then one after the other they went out the front door. As they filed down the stairs, Nicolas, leading the line, clucked his tongue to get their attention: “Kebab?” he asked. And the others replied as one: “Kebab, kebab!”
Only Drone stayed behind, to wait for his sister and take her home.
PART THREE
TEMPEST
The secret to the fried seafood specialty known as frittura di paranza is knowing how to choose the smaller fish: none of them can be out of balance with all the others. If you get an anchovy bone caught between your teeth, then you picked one that was too big; if you can recognize the squid because you didn’t pick out a small enough one, then it’s no longer frittura di paranza: it’s just a big grab bag of fish you happened to have available. The frittura di paranza deserves the name when everything you’ve used can wind up in your mouth and be chewed and swallowed without identifying it. The frittura di paranza is made with the fish no one wants; only when they’re all put together does it find its true flavor. But you have to know how to bread them, rolling them in the finest-quality flour, and of course it’s the frying that really gives the meal its final benediction. Attaining the exact flavor is the battle that you fight on the iron of the frying pan, on the drizzle of squeezed olive juice, the oil, the soul of the wheat, the flour, the extract of seawater, the fish. Victory is won when it’s all in perfect equilibrium and the paranza has a single flavor in your mouth.
The paranza is over quickly, as it comes into existence it vanishes. Frienn’e magnanno, frying and eating. It needs to be hot the way the sea is hot when they fish it at night. When the nets are hauled on board, on the bottom are these tiny creatures mixed in with the larger mass of fish, undersized sole, cod that have swum too little. The fish is sold off and there they remain, at the bottom of the crates, among the chunks of melting ice. Alone they’re worthless, have no market price, but gathered up in a cuoppo di carta—a paper cone—and fried together, they become prized delicacies. They were nothing in the sea, they were nothing in the fishing nets, weightless on the scales, but several on a plate, they become an exquisite treat. In the mouth, it’s all chomped up together. Together at the sea bottom, together in the net, breaded together, dumped together into the seething oil, together under the tooth and on the palate—one alone, the taste of the paranza. But once on the plate, there is only the briefest of moments to eat: once it cools, the breading seperates from the fish. The meal becomes a corpse.
Fast you’re born in the sea, fast fished out of it, fast you wind up scorched in the pan, fast you’re ground between the teeth, fast is the pleasure.
LET’S GO TAKE CHARGE
The first to mention it was Nicolas. He and the others were at the New Maharaja, waiting for the beginning of the new year. The year that would launch them into their future.
Drago’ and Briato’ were on the terrace, crushed on all sides by the crowd. They were doing what everyone else was doing, which meant they were reciting the countdown while looking out over the sea off Posillipo, with a magnum of champagne, thumbs ready to pop the cork. They weaved from side to side, held up by that human tide rejoicing at the year that was about to arrive. Their physical contact with the light fabrics of the girls’ skimpy outfits, the scent of the aftershave that belonged to an age that was not yet theirs, the conversations overheard between individuals who seemed to hold the world in their fists … and one overwhelming drunken spree. On the terrace, the paranza kept losing track of one another and then linking back up, one second jumping up and down in unison, linked together by their arms around one another’s waists, the next second talking in loud voices with people they’d never laid eyes on before. But they never really lost one another, in fact they sought one another out if only to exchange the smile that stood for the fact that everything was wonderful. And the year that followed would be
even more wonderful.
Five, four, three …
Nicolas felt it even more than the others, but he hadn’t set foot on the terrace. When the DJ had invited everyone to go outside, where they could look out over the sea, he’d hugged Letizia close and tight, and had stepped into the flood of people, but then he’d frozen to the spot as she was swept away. He’d stood there, facing the big plate-glass windows against which everyone seemed to be packed as if in an overcrowded aquarium, and then he’d started walking backward, retracing his steps to the private room that now belonged to them, that through his efforts Oscar now had to keep unfailingly free for the use of the paranza. He took a seat in a velvet armchair, he let himself slam down onto it, indifferent to the fact that the seat was wet with champagne, and remained there until the others came in, upbraiding him as an asshole because he’d missed this one woman who was higher than shit and who’d stripped naked so her husband had had to cover her with a tablecloth. All Nicolas said was: “They need to understand that no one’s safe anymore. That the apartment buildings, the shops, the motor scooters, the bars, the churches—they’re all something we allow them.”
“What are you trying to say, Maraja?” asked Briato’. He was on his seventh flute of Polisy and was waving the hand not holding the glass to waft away the stench of sulfur from the fireworks that were going off outside.
“I’m saying that for real everything that exists in this neighborhood belongs to us.”
“Like fuck it belongs to us! It’s not like we’ve got the money to buy it all!”
“What’s that got to do with anything! We don’t have to buy everything. It belongs to us by right, it’s our property, if we want we can burn it all down. They have to understand that they need to keep their eyes down and their mouths shut. They need to understand.”
“But how are they supposed to understand that? Are we going to shoot everyone who doesn’t want to take orders?” Dentino broke in. He’d left his jacket somewhere and was flashing a short-sleeved purple shirt that left the tattoo of a shark he’d recently had inked on his forearm in plain view.
The Piranhas, The Boy Bosses of Naples Page 26