“I don’t know if it made the news in your country at the time. In England it was a drama. Ten thousand respectable, honest, hardworking people lost all their savings in one fell blow.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Nick Leeson. I’ll never forget his name. It was 1995. He was a trader for Barings Bank in Hong Kong. He had gambled away millions of their capital on the stock market and then billions more in an attempt to make good on his loss, then he fled to Thailand in his Ferrari. They got him in the end, tried him, and sent him to prison. He did his time. Then he wrote a book that became a bestseller and made him a multi-millionaire again. But Barings Bank was bankrupt. And do you know what it means when a bank goes bankrupt? I know you know what it means.
“If I add it all up, what with my time in the army, my work as a Cambridge professor, everything I did in Italy after that—not to mention the work I carried on doing for certain British contacts, but I can’t tell you anything about that unfortunately—and then my father’s money and a little from my mother on top—if you’d added it all up, I’d have received a pension of more than eight thousand pounds a month. How much is that in euros? But I lost the lot. I’m one of the Barings bankruptcy victims. I’m one of Nick Leeson’s victims. And now I live on a small state pension of a few hundred euros. Just enough to pay for that shithole I live in. And the rest goes on drink and cigarettes. And every month I have to choose whether to take my shirts to the drycleaners or get my shoes resoled. That’s how tight things are.”
He took a large sip of gin and tonic.
“That’s how tight things are. But you can also look at it another way—imagine if I’d had eight thousand euros a month to drink, I’d have been long dead. Cheers, big ears. Here’s to Nick Leeson.”
6.
We began to worry about Don. The crowds that filed past his table every evening to embrace him and kiss his ring couldn’t see it. They saw the clown they hoped to see, and he delivered on cue. We were a handful of foreigners—a Scot, a Paddy, a couple of Brits, a Pole who’d married in, a Czech—who saw him most days on the square. It was a group of good friends, from whom I often distanced myself because the language of communication was English. And that wasn’t even the real problem. It was the kind of small, expat community that talked about the test match results, the Queen Mum, and the best place in Genoa to buy Marmite. The aftershocks of British colonialism. Speaking their language allowed you into the club—but let’s see if you really are civilized and know the cricket scores. And in the meantime, have a laugh about the Italians who happen to have the privilege of temporarily welcoming you, with your superior culture and your superior irony, to their corrupt and endlessly inefficient country, at which you shake your head pityingly, because there is still scaffolding up that was there six months ago and your doorstep hasn’t been repaired yet. I didn’t come south to listen to superior shorts-wearing northerners cracking jokes about the south in their superior language, with all kinds of puns on the names of English cricketers and little else that was of importance that day in the Commonwealth. But they were friends of Don’s. And they were nice people. So I couldn’t and didn’t want to keep ignoring them.
We had a crisis meeting in a place Don would never find us: the Mandragola. Rebecca, the owner of Caffè Letterario was there, too, because as manageress of his favorite haunt, she was best placed to pass judgment on Don’s situation. The meeting was opened by our Scottish friend, who thanked us all for attending and emphasized that this meeting should never come to Don’s attention. We all nodded obediently. Then he explained in a nutshell what our problems came down to by describing Don’s skin color. He said it was “olive green.” At this, a lively discussion sprung up. The lobby for “moss green” seemed to gain the majority stake at first, but after a veto from the Eastern Bloc countries, a compromise was reached: “puke green.” The next item on the agenda was his physical health. A small minority described him as “skinny.” But they were overruled by a majority who considered him “emaciated.” The debate finally moved on to his many injuries and their failure to heal properly and the cause of his strangely swollen stomach. Our Scottish chairman suggested a compromise: that Don, despite the differing interpretations the various parties might have, was looking unhealthier by the day. This motion was unanimously approved.
At that moment, Rebecca took the floor. “I love Don,” she said. “He’s a living legend. I don’t mind if he drinks himself to death on my terrace. He’s an adult. It’s his choice. And in some ways, I feel honored, although perhaps that’s the wrong choice of words. I mean—”
We nodded understandingly. We knew exactly what she meant.
“What I mean is this. On an average evening, he easily drinks a whole bottle. Gin. A liter. That’s forty euros, retail price. And he can’t even pay the cost price. Sorry to be so prosaic. Don is a poem. But I still have to cash up at the end of the night.”
There was a silence. And suddenly all of Don’s friends had places they needed to be. I stayed behind with Rebecca. “The most important thing,” I said, “is that Don never finds out that we met up to try and help him. He has his pride. It’s the only thing he has left. He would never forgive us.”
Rebecca didn’t say anything.
7.
“After Malaysia, I was posted to Japan and Korea. Japan was a doddle. It meant drinking G&Ts with the Japanese. I’ll give you two guesses who won. And in Korea I had a kind of admin job. For a month. And after that I was at a secret British naval base in Saudi Arabia for a while. It was so secret, even in the upper echelons of the British Army there weren’t many people who knew of its existence. But the Israelis knew about it. And they demonstrated that by flying over on a weekly basis and bombarding the runways. Symbolically. With flowers. As a warning. To make it clear that they were keeping an eye on us and that nothing would stop them if they did decide to bomb us because we weren’t keeping our heads down. Sometimes they’d come a day earlier or later. And once the Saudi pilots had just gone out to train when they came along. All the pilots were princes. Terribly spoiled. And terrified of the Israelis. And two of them were so terrified they used their ejector seats and let their expensive fighter planes crash in the desert. We laughed a lot about that.
“But Malaysia was tough. That was real. We were given a jungle survival training course in Kuala Lumpur. What was edible and not. How to make drinking water from your own piss. There were these plants with huge leaves. Really. This big. We called them elephant’s ears. They’re poisonous. If you eat them raw, you die. But if you soak them for a night in your own excrement, they become extremely nutritious. And in case of emergency, I always carried a bottle of gin in my rucksack.
“We were hunting CTs. Communist terrorists. These days I’d call them freedom fighters. Pitched our tents behind their lines. The stress. The stress was the worst thing. Four men keeping guard and after four hours being relieved by the other four. Taking turns to sleep in four-hour shifts. And never shooting. If only that was true. That would have made it a little more bearable. I have my doubts those CTs existed. I never saw one.
“There were Frenchmen, though. On our rugby pitch. They came from Vietnam. Their base was surrounded and they were evacuated by helicopter. To our rugby pitch in Malaysia. They’d had a lot thrown at them, you could see that. Wounded. Torn uniforms. Lice, leeches, gunshot wounds, and no gin and tonic for weeks. So, us Brits, we started by giving those Frenchmen a good wash. A great heap of tattered uniforms on the rugby field, gasoline, and a lighter. And there they were, stark naked in a row in front of the showers. The officers, too. Their beer bellies gave them away.”
He ordered ice and a lacrima.
“We called them the FBBs. Fat beer bellies.”
8.
“In total, I spent eight years in the army. Eight fucking years of my life. It was a complete waste of time, all things considered. I learned nothing but skills I hoped I would never ever need—like shooting freedom fighters, cooking elephant’s ears in m
y own excrement, and catching shrapnel in my stomach. It was finally time to do something useful with my life. Useful mainly in the sense of easier to combine with my thirst. I wanted to sit in bars like a civilized human being, not in submerged manholes in the jungle. I could put my talents to better use. And my illustrious career proved me right.
“I decided to study. English literature at Cambridge. But there was one problem. I’d never finished school. I didn’t have any A-levels. And you need A-levels to get in, don’t you? I mean, that wasn’t enough, you had to submit essays, too, take entrance exams, that kind of thing; but without A-levels, you didn’t even get the chance to try. So I had to come up with a plan.
“I had a mate in the army, a simple lad from Birmingham. He couldn’t write his own name, but he was brilliant at drawing. He made clever cartoons of our officers on the backs of bread packets or whatever he could lay his hands on. It was a wonder it never got him into trouble. They were so cruel, so accurate, so good. I thought: that’s the man I need.
“I can’t remember his name. Peter. Something like that. Or Brian. But that doesn’t matter. He was brilliant at drawing. Or did I already say that? And he owed me a favor. Ha-ha! It still makes me laugh to think of it. That was in Japan. No! Korea! It was in Korea. I remember it well. He had a lady visitor—that was our euphemism at the time. A scarlet lady. They popped up fairly often on Her Majesty’s Royal Army base. But of course it was strictly prohibited, you’ll understand. To pluck the fruits. To consume, for a modest fee, the ripe fruits that had fallen on the ground in front of your very feet. We were British, weren’t we? Ha-ha! And this Richard or Mark or whatever his name was had found one who screamed like a stuck pig. I still remember it well. I was standing in the corridor keeping a look out. And then one of those five star generals came along ‘to inspect the troops,’ as it were. Can you imagine? No, listen. That Korean floozy lying there screaming like all the karaoke bars in Taipei put together and the general coming down the corridor. Do you know what I did? I faked a coughing fit. I coughed her out. I coughed a hysterical little Korean whore all the way home. The general was worried. ‘Asthma, General. I suffer from terrible asthma. And being in the tropics doesn’t make it any better. The medical examiner didn’t want to pass me when I signed up. I got down on my knees and begged him to show some mercy. My greatest desire was to fight for England, the queen, and the free western democracy.’ The general gave me a pat on the shoulder and walked on.
“So that John or Edwin or whatever he was called owed me a favor. He was a simple lad. But what you need to know is that he was really damn good at drawing. Or did I say that already? So I gave him a copy of my brother’s exam certificate. Don’t ask me how I managed that. It’s a long story. And Michael or Steve or whatever he was called copied it. He faked my exam certificate. I could apply for university. My essays on James Joyce and the English metaphysical poets went down brilliantly. That’s how I ended up at Cambridge.”
Don took a big sip of his gin and tonic. “Cheers, big ears.” He fell into a coughing fit. When he’d finished coughing, he said, “I can still do it. I’m one of the great coughers of my generation. Didn’t Oscar Wilde have a clever quip about that? Anyway, it was a close call.”
A group of teenagers walked by. They found it important to greet Don, one by one. To ask his opinion about Sampdoria, which had been on a losing streak for weeks. He stood up and hugged them all, while getting all their names wrong, which he made up for by singing the Sampdoria club song. That was the way it always went.
“What was a close call?”
“Almost getting kicked out in my first year.”
“Tell me.”
“No, Ilja. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Otherwise you’ll put it all in the same chapter.”
“Since when have you worried about my novel’s structure? You’re a character, try to remember that!”
“And what a character! Ha-ha! Let’s drink to that. But I do want a bit of space for my story. I can’t write it all down myself anymore. So I’m using you for that. And make sure you don’t make stuff up. I’m much better at that than you. Ha-ha! We all live in a yellow submarine.”
9.
When I bumped into Don the next day on the Piazza delle Erbe he looked radiant. He was glowing. I was almost worried. “Don, what happened?” He removed a newspaper from his inside pocket with a triumphant gesture. It was the Sampdoria club paper. “Page eight,” he said. There he was. A full-page photograph. With the caption: Don, one of Sampdoria’s biggest supporters. I congratulated him on this corroboration of his fame. He dismissed the compliment, beaming. “Oh, well, Ilja. I’ve been in this city for so long. I know them all. Vialli and the rest. I’ve given them all English lessons. Gullit, too. But to be honest I thought he was an arrogant bastard. I don’t go to the stadium these days. I’m too old. And I suffer from dizzy spells. But I used to go to every home match. The last time was on my birthday. Four or five years ago, or maybe even six. And they knew. At a certain point the entire stadium was singing, ‘Happy Birthday to Don.’ It was moving. The referee held a two-minute silence. All the players came to the gradinata sud where I always sat and applauded me. It was the nicest birthday present I ever had.
“All my friends are Doriani. You know, there are three sounds I cannot bear: breaking glass, the sound of shutters going down in the bars at closing time, and ‘Forza Genoa.’ You are a Genoano, I know. Even though you seem like an intelligent man. But there are other things about you I don’t understand, either. For example, why you carry on drinking those disgusting cocktails instead of becoming a member of the Gordon’s Club, whose chairman, secretary, and treasurer you have before you.
“I was there at Wembley, too, when Sampdoria played in the Champions League final against Barcelona. Simon arranged it, a friend of mine who was working at the aquarium as a dolphin trainer at the time. He called me a few days before the match. ‘I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve found cheap flights. The bad news is that we’re flying via Amsterdam with a four-hour transfer.’ Yippee! We went to a coffee shop and got as high as a kite. After the match, they gently broke the news to me that Sampdoria had lost. The entire match had passed me by.
“And on the return journey, too—the same coffee shop. Or another, I wouldn’t be able to say. They all look terribly similar, don’t you think? When it was time to go to Schiphol to catch our flight back to Genoa, we still had a big chunk of hashish left. ‘Don’t take it with you, Simon. Think about it. Give it to those two boys at that table.’ ‘You’re right, Don, that would be a better idea. But I’ve just flushed it down the loo.’
“At Genoa airport, the sniffer dogs lunged at us. They jumped all over Simon. ‘Fuck, Simon,’ I said, ‘you didn’t…?’ But they couldn’t find anything. ‘It’s on our clothes,’ we said. ‘We’ve spent the entire afternoon in a coffee shop in Amsterdam. The smoke’s on our clothes. That’s what the dogs can smell.’ And they let us go because they couldn’t find anything.
“In the taxi from the airport to Piazza delle Erbe, Simon said, ‘Do you fancy a joint, Don?’ He had shoved the hash up his arse. In a condom. He’d gone to the loo in the coffee shop in Amsterdam to get a condom out of the machine and put the hash up his arse. Can you imagine? And that’s without even mentioning whether I still felt like smoking it once I knew where it had been for the entire flight.
“And this brings me to something completely different. Do you remember accusing me of meddling with the structure of your novel last night? You might have forgotten it, you drunkard, but I haven’t. Because what do I still have to tell you? Well? Exactly. Why I almost got sent down from Cambridge in my first year. And that didn’t have anything to do with hashish. But everything to do with a condom.
“Back in those days we still had servants in college. Kind of butlers for the students who made their beds in the mornings. We called them ‘bedders.’ One of the bedders found a used condom in my bed, something which didn’t surprise me
at all, by the way. I was summoned by the dean. He pulled a face and got it out of an envelope with the tip of a pencil. He dangled it in front of my nose. ‘Is this yours, Perrygrove Sinclair?’ I put on my glasses to get a better look. I studied the condom carefully. And do you know what I said? The dean laughed so much he had to let me off. You should be able to guess. I just said it. If I’m interfering with the structure of your novel, I’m doing a good job.”
He took a formidable sip of gin and tonic and gave me a triumphant look.
“They all look terribly similar, don’t you think?”
10.
Don could be irresistible at times. He had a talent for making himself lovable and used this to gain personal favors, which he then considered his right and a legal basis for further favors. Catering staff were his main victims. He used his charm to take advantage of them. What began as an extra ice cube would imperceptibly morph over the space of a few weeks into his own glass of maximum volume, a personal chair, permission to stay on after closing time, and liters of free gin. And whenever a bar owner was brave enough to move Don’s process of appropriating the bar back a step, he’d explode. When a self-created privilege was taken away from him, he could be unusually unpleasant. Like a spoiled child not getting its own way.
And he lost control completely when his drink supply was stopped; for example, when the barman concluded, after he’d fallen over three times, that he’d had enough. Even if he didn’t have any money left to pay for his next gin and tonic, he’d consider it a universal human right to be allowed to drink one more, and anyone disagreeing was a fascist or much worse.
A lack of attention was also catastrophic. He could have an angry outburst when a group had collected at his table and didn’t consider him the cornerstone of the company—for example when no English was spoken or when English was being spoken, but he was being ignored because he was too drunk to say anything sensible. During an angry moment, he’d wake up out of his stupor and call them every name under the sun.
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