by Edoardo Nesi
It was as if every time Pasquale mentioned poverty he would lose all of his strength, sapped by the fear that it might return, and he would almost be faltering by the time he took his final steps toward the house. Then he would throw himself on the bed and fall instantly asleep, with his clothes on, and Maria would delicately undress him, tuck him under the covers, kiss him on the temples, and stroke his hair, because she knew that his work could not be as easy as he described it. Then she would fall asleep, serene, next to her man.
THE EXTRA MAN
SO, CESARE, as you might have noticed, there are a few changes here: my father has retired and left me the firm, and Barrocciai Blankets no longer exists. We now have Barrocciai Textiles, and I’m the owner and the director…Thank you. Thank you. We’ve moved to these old offices. The girls are still down in the cubicle sorting out the old company’s final orders, then I’ll take them on. Last week I hired ten people, and next month I’ll hire two more. The company is taking off, Cesare, and it’s going well, but we have a lot of expenses and I no longer have a problem with space, so we need to slow down on the project for the new factory. That’s why I called you in. I’m already full up to my eyeballs with the banks, so we must slow down…No, Cesare, don’t laugh, it’s not a joke and I haven’t said we have to stop, I’ve said we need to slow down…And that’s a joke anyway, because we’ve been talking about it for over a year and you still haven’t shown me anything, not even one drawing…Yes? Really? Is that right? And you didn’t tell me anything? Where is it? Let’s see it then, damn it, I’ve been waiting for a year! You should have told me right away about the plans, Cesare! We need to celebrate! Now, let’s have a look and see if I can understand anything from all this…This is where the offices will be, correct? The stairs look a little small though. I want a staircase to my office, in white Carrara marble. Immaculate, it must be…Well, let’s make it in travertine, then, but it must be beautiful, Cesare…I’ll also need an elevator, I think, in case I break my leg or end up in a wheelchair. Why are you looking at me like that? You’ve got to think of everything. Hey, I’m going to be spending my whole life in this place! Not a private elevator, I want one that the employees can use, too…No, Cesare, no. Not a service elevator. A real elevator. Beautiful. But it doesn’t have to be luxurious, it needs to be useful. Nothing in this company must be a luxury. Have you put in air-conditioning? Because we’ll need it. Otherwise in summer everyone will be dripping with sweat and nothing will ever get done…I want it in the offices, in the sample room, and in the spinning and weaving sheds, too…Ah…No, I’ve never actually heard of a textile factory with air-conditioning in the technical sheds either. Let’s put that on hold for the moment…This must be the main technical area, correct? The forecourt must be visible from my office, I want to see everything: people coming and going, the trucks loading and unloading. I’ll be able to see everything?…Good. Which one is my office? This one? It’s too small. It doesn’t matter if it’s forty square meters: it’s too small. I want an office the size of a tennis court to make up for the two years I’ve spent in that cubicle. Come on, I’m joking! Cesare, you’ve gone pale…But it needs to be bigger than that…And where is the pool?…Oh, I see. I thought it was the roof. Well, I guess it is the roof. But it’s huge, Cesare, it’s…huge. It’s really fifty meters long? And no one will be able to see me swimming, right? No, because all of the lots around mine have been bought, and Brunero has bought one too…He’ll build a tiny little warehouse, I’m sure, he’s so fucking tight…There’s an incredible energy in the city, Cesare. Everybody has so much work, they’re giving it away. I’ve been told of a barber who last year opened a spinning firm that works twenty-four hours a day, every day, even Sundays, and he’s just bought himself a Mercedes…No, not the Pagoda, the 200 diesel, in beige. I bought a Pagoda…Yes, really. Yes, the Roadster. No, I’m not joking. Thanks. I’ll show you later. I keep it in the warehouse, under a tarpaulin. Well, I use it to go to the seaside, but only when the weather is good and I can put the roof down…You should see how good it looks: I never had such a beautiful car…Metallic light blue, leather seats. It was a moment of madness, Cesare, it cost me a fortune, I don’t even know if I can afford it…Everything I have is in the company’s name. I have next to nothing in my bank account, I’d bet there’s more money in your account right now than in mine. Anyway, let’s get back to us. I want total and absolute privacy in the swimming pool…Also for the customers who will go up there to relax once they’ve signed their orders. It’s a selling point, you see? Not a luxury. Luxury at work is for fools…Okay, are we done? Is there anything else? No? Well, I like these plans. When can we start? Because, as I told you, I have a lot of expenses, and I’m a bit tight with the banks…How long do you think it will take?…Yes, where do I need to sign?…There you go. How long to get it signed off by the council?…Three months? Is that all? It doesn’t seem long enough. Let’s say six. And how long will it take to build?…No way, Cesare, come on…Ah, just the walls…One year still doesn’t seem long enough…But then I’ll have to take all the machinery there, move over all the systems…I’ll be in by ’77, I imagine, not before. Maybe even ’78. It’s a big job, Cesare. And have you worked out how much it’s going to cost me?…Go on, tell me. I know it’s a lot, tell me, come on…Shit! Including the swimming pool? One and a half billion lire? You’re going to cost me one and a half billion? It’s too much. It’s way too much, and I need to take it easy now, Cesare…Slow down, I told you. I can’t take all that blood out of the new firm now…No, no, Cesare, listen to me. Ivo Barrocciai doesn’t have problems with money, and never will, okay? Don’t forget that. Never. Look, I want to be straight with you…The other day I saw the bank manager and told him I wanted to start building the new factory, and I would need a billion. I thought a billion would be enough, damn it…Okay, he looked me in the eye and said, “Barrocciai, you go ahead, don’t worry, I’ll straighten it out with Rome.” I left the bank walking on air. It’s like this, you see: if you have money and you’ve got ideas and you want to work, they’ll lend you the money…No, I’m not scared of debts, not at all. I’m growing, and I’ll keep on growing. I’ll pay all that money back, that’s not a problem. With German customers paying within ten days and the banks charging interest every six months, I’ll have everything paid back in no time. You can set your watch by the punctuality of German payments, Cesare. I’ve got work coming out of my ears, yes, but it’s not enough. I want more. I want this to be an important company. I want to employ lots of people. Not like my competitors, who are scared of their own shadow, always scrimping and saving, working in pigsties…They don’t even produce samples. I want to employ all the workers I need, and then one more. Because that’s how I create value, understand? I add it to the world instead of taking it out, and when it’s created, the value comes back to you…No, Cesare, I’m not a philosopher, I’m an entrepreneur. I do it because the day will always come when you need an extra man, and that day all the money you’ve spent over the years comes back to you. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s crystal clear to me. Think about it, Cesare, I’m always abroad selling, and while I’m in Germany, or America, or Japan, or Cape Town in South Africa, my business needs loyal, honest, tireless workers, people who care about the business as much as I do. They’re the ones who’ll keep it going. I call the shots, of course, but they’re the ones who do all the work, and if they aren’t any good, if they don’t give their hundred percent, if they don’t want to stay that extra hour, the company won’t go anywhere, you see? You know that the most beautiful fabrics in the world have always been invented by the workers, not by the stylists, right? They handle your fabrics every day and start to wonder whether they would become softer or shinier with a different setting of the machines, and one fine day they try it out without asking for permission, and out comes the right fabric, one you can then sell the world over. But if you’ve never spoken to those guys, if you’ve never asked them how they are or wished them a merry Christma
s, if you’ve treated them badly or paid them poorly or late or unwillingly, if you’ve treated them like they treat them in those huge metalworking firms in the North, there’s no way in hell they’re going to try out that idea they had, or do you a favor. It’s teamwork, Cesare, always. And I want to be the captain. I want to be great, and I’ll work as much as possible, and I’ll do whatever it takes!…Come on, that’s enough with speeches. Today is a great day. The new factory is getting started!…No, no! Go on, Cesare, go on! No slowing down, I take it back! We start immediately. Let’s get started! In fifteen days’ time, actually in a month, I’ll give you the first payment. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll get it to you. Ah, another important thing. I want a line of cypress trees from Bolgheri all around the factory. Male cypress trees, not female. The ones as straight as spindles. They will be my fence, because who’s ever going to steal from me, Cesare? Write it down on this sheet of paper: Bolgheri cypress trees. Lots of them. Male.
AN IRON SUPPOSITORY
IT IS A CLEAR SUNDAY MORNING in the dry November of 1976, and the sky is filled with fluffy clouds vainly trying to hide a furious, distant sun. The midnight-blue Alfetta with only one window open — the rear one, so Arianna can smoke — sits haughtily in the middle of the field, right in front of the white-and-red tape trembling in the breeze to keep the onlookers three hundred meters away from a big hole in the ground that is carefully surveilled by two police cars with flashing lights and two fire engines. Because the hole isn’t really a hole, but a mere graze no more than forty centimeters deep, the dozen men fumbling about in it seem to be caught in quicksand.
Some fifty curious onlookers stand around Barrocciai’s Alfetta. They have arrived in dribs and drabs to watch the show: all men but Maria Citarella, who arrived sidesaddle on a Lambretta driven by her husband, who parked fifty meters away out of the usual embarrassment and walked slowly to the car, waving shyly in the direction of the Alfetta’s windshield, which the sun had transformed into a mirror.
He can’t bear the sight of all those layabouts who have come to enjoy the show dressed like hunters, with cameras and binoculars around their necks — one even has a video camera. He grumbles, shakes his head. If he could, he would kick them out of the field, which, after the graze, is now officially his building site.
Inside the car, the only sound is the barely audible chewing of Arianna’s peppermint gum.
— You know, it’s infuriating. I mean, it was dropped from a kilometer, it hit the ground without exploding, and it hasn’t exploded for thirty-four years, but now they say that the slightest vibration could set it off at any moment! And why do they have to explode it here? Why can’t they take it away? Eh, Cesare?
—…
— Cesare…
— Yes, Arianna?
— Ivo asked you a question.
— Oh, sorry Ivo, I was thinking about something else. What did you ask me?
— Cesare is always thinking about something else. He’s been like that for a while…
— What are you talking about, Arianna? I don’t…Sorry, Ivo, what did you ask me?
— Are we absolutely one hundred percent sure that this thing isn’t going to be a problem for the building site?
— No, Ivo, it’s definitely not going to be a problem at all. They explode it, they leave, and we can get back to work.
— So, no damage?
— No damage. We’d only laid a few fixed cables. And we would have to dig for the foundations anyway.
— But it’s insane! I buy land and they find a bomb in it from the war! Brunero must be laughing like a madman…You know what, Vittorio? It looks like a suppository. I’ve seen it. It’s exactly the same shape. Absolutely identical. Just imagine an iron suppository, all rusty, about a meter and a half long. You see, champ, or, rather, Little Beast?
At hearing himself being called Little Beast, Vittorio rolls his eyes and snorts silently. He should have never signed up for those under-twelve Tuscan championships in the first place, and then he shouldn’t have won it without conceding even one set, dressed like Bjorn Borg, so no one would be calling him Little Beast now. He is very tired, having spent most of his immense twelve-year-old’s night reading Foundation, the first book of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
— Really?
— You know, Ivo, Cesare said, there are lots of unexploded bombs around. They often find them when they start digging, and not just here, everywhere the war was fought. Even in Germany, France, Britain…
Far away, the sound of a helicopter.
— Of course, if no one checked whether the bombs dropped from the airplanes exploded or not, you can’t even sue the manufacturer for the unexploded bombs.
— Pardon, Ivo?
— No, I was thinking that…well, if a bomb doesn’t explode it’s defective, right?
— Well, yes, in a way, I suppose. But it’s a blessed defect, isn’t it? If it doesn’t explode, it doesn’t kill anyone or destroy anything.
— Don’t start being a pacifist now, Arianna, you and your friend Kennedy!
— Pacifism has nothing to do with it.
— And Kennedy was hardly a pacifist.
— You see? Ivo understands. It has nothing to do with pacifism. You really are unpleasant sometimes, Cesare…
— But Arianna, it wasn’t really about the war. I was just thinking about the business side of it. If the bomb is defective and doesn’t explode, but it’s been paid for, someone is making money, right?
— I’m sorry, Ivo, but I don’t understand.
— Let me give you an example. If you build an empty bomb, without any explosives inside, it’s going to cost you less than a real bomb, okay? And if no one can check whether or not the bomb has exploded, because they were all dropped together from dozens of airplanes at the same time, then someone can rip the government off and make money from it, right? That’s what I was trying to say.
Arianna sees Vittorio shaking his head in mute disbelief, and an incredibly loud, inhuman voice amplified by a megaphone announces, “The bomb will be detonated in a few minutes’ time,” and advises everybody to “maintain a safe distance.” As if in response to the warning, Arianna gets out of the car, followed by the others a few seconds later.
Silence has fallen over the field. Arianna leans on the bonnet of the Alfetta and tugs gently at the belt of her long, soft, cream-colored coat. It feels like an embrace. She smiles at the thought that Christmas would soon be upon them, with the gifts, the roasted chestnuts, the pipers coming down from the mountains, the new movies…It might even snow.
— Cesare, Arianna! The sky this morning looks like it’s made out of wool! Look at those clouds, aren’t they flakes of carbonized Australian fleece?
Amused, Arianna turns toward Ivo, who immediately answers her smile with a slow, warm, intense one directed right at her, and her alone. It lasts three seconds, no more, then he slowly turns to look ahead, toward the hole. Arianna is surprised, but also somehow rewarded that a handsome man like Ivo — a successful man, a man of industry — would smile at her in that way. She hasn’t been looked at like that in years. She turns toward Cesare and finds him deep in conversation with the painter from the South. He didn’t see anything. But, then, what was there to see? Nothing happened, nothing at all. It was a smile, just a smile.
A dozen men exit the hole and move quickly away from it. The breeze suddenly picks up and Arianna closes her eyes, holding them shut until she hears the sound of helicopter blades. Vittorio points it out to her. It’s a green military thing, floating unnaturally in the air, twenty meters from the ground. Then, the voice from the megaphone: Ten. Nine.
— You should put on your glasses, Ivo says to her as he slips on a pair of mirrored Ray-Bans.
Eight. Seven.
She smiles at him.
— I’ll take the risk.
Six. Five.
And Ivo thinks how beautiful Arianna still is, and turns once more to watch her furtively. Even
though she is looking straight at the hole, Ivo is sure she knows he is staring at her, and she likes it.
Four. Three.
And Arianna thinks that it would be wonderful if all the defective bombs that hadn’t exploded during the war had been made that way on purpose, if they were created that way by some kind of a small clandestine army of pacifist saboteurs — because of course she was a pacifist! — present in all nations, all unaware of each other’s work but guided by the same convictions: good gnomes who, while they built bombs, made one out of ten innocuous — or one out of eight, perhaps — by disarming it in some undetectable way that they alone knew about, and in a way that no one else could ever discover, like pulling out a hidden wire or undoing a special screw, making the bomb nothing more than an enormous piece of iron, dangerous only if it landed on your head.
And what a wonderful film they would make from the story of these men who sabotaged silently and secretly, risking imprisonment or even death on the spot, always quietly reciting the same words or even prayers as they sabotaged — enemies of their state only because they were devoted to a higher idea, the idea of peace!
Arianna pulls her coat around her, holds on to Vittorio, and closes her eyes.
Two. One.
THE SMELL OF THE NEW
IF YOU LOOKED AT PASQUALE CITARELLA — not an inch over five feet six, a Nazionale cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, shoulders and legs curved by all the weight he lifts every day, sky-blue eyes fixed within a square face that never failed to appear friendly — he wouldn’t seem very different from all the other fathers who, exhausted and sweaty and dusty, returned to the Green Zone to join their families for dinner.