The idiot didn’t know how to respond to that one and changed the subject. “How do you intend to structure your lecture?”
“I . . . was planning to start with some of the more controversial historical cases,” Dante muttered, making it up as he went along.
“The crème de la crème of conspiracy theories,” said Uberti.
“Yes, and a dusting of urban legends—” He broke off because two students had just sat down in the third row and were turning and waving to another pair just arriving. So people were actually coming to hear what he had to say. The mere thought chilled him to the bone, and he stood frozen in place in the middle of the courtyard, his feet two blocks of cement.
“And after that?” the idiot persisted.
“I need to find a bathroom,” he said.
“It’s that way,” said the idiot, pointing to the door that led into the main building. To Dante, it looked like the entrance to the tunnel in his dream, a gaping maw ready to devour him.
“I really just wanted some water.”
“Ah, well, there’s a vending machine. In the same place.”
Dante looked at him, and he thought he could see the word “IDIOT” written in his eyes. “I’m claustrophobic. That’s why I wanted to teach this lesson in the open air.”
Idiot Degli Uberti smiled apologetically. “Of course, of course. Forgive me. I just thought that for short trips . . .”
“That depends on the situation. And right now it’s not a good situation.” One of the psychiatrists who had treated him when he was a boy had taught him how to evaluate the intensity of his symptoms on a rating that ran from one to ten, and his internal thermometer was bubbling along at about the seventh notch. If it rose even a little higher, he would have to head back home. In the meantime, eight more students had taken seats. He’d told himself that if there were fewer than ten in the audience, he wouldn’t even get started, but they were already above that number.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go. Still or bubbly water?”
“Whatever, as long as it’s liquid.”
The idiot took off; Dante immediately stuck both hands into his book bag and pulled out a blister pack of Pregabalin, a painkiller that also happened to be a powerful antianxiety medicine. It was generally prescribed for diabetics, but Dante had discovered that it worked very well for him as emergency therapy. If he swallowed the capsules, though, it took too long to kick in, so Dante turned around to face a column and twisted open two capsules, snorting the powder while pretending to scratch his nose. Inhaled through the nasal capillaries, it would take effect in just a few minutes.
“Signor Torre?” said a youthful voice behind him.
Dante wiped his nostrils on the sleeve of his jacket—I swear that’s not cocaine—and found himself face-to-face with a pair of students who were smiling at him, a boy and a girl, both scarcely older than twenty. He had the wan features and bowed shoulders of the classic grind, while she was attractive, in a pink T-shirt straining to contain a thirty-six-inch bra. Dante struggled to keep his eyes from dropping below her neck and quickly shook hands with them, afterward wiping his hand on his trousers, taking care not to let it be observed. He hated being touched by strangers. Or even by close intimates more often than not.
“We’ve come to see your lecture, Signor Torre,” said the boy.
“We’re certain it’s going to be ever so interesting,” said the girl.
“Ah, thanks,” Dante replied without a clue what else to say.
The girl smiled at him seductively. “We’ve read lots of things about you.”
“Only believe the good ones.”
“But the bad things are so much more interesting,” she chimed in again, and this time she giggled. “Is it true that you never go out?”
You’re half my age, little girl. Don’t make me feel like a dirty old man, thought Dante. “That’s overstating things a little,” he lied.
“And that you live in a hotel?”
“That’s certainly true.” At least for the moment. He would have to leave his hotel room in the next couple of weeks, or else settle his bill. Both options seemed equally impractical. He’d already had to give up using the laundry service, instead taking his clothes to the Blue Wave laundromat nearby, and his shirts were now a pathetic mess. The one he was wearing today had big white patches where the detergent hadn’t rinsed out properly, but under his jacket, no one could see that.
The boy butted in, practically standing between them. “We think it’s very courageous to do what you did. To defy the powers that be to get the truth about your case.”
The powers that be? What the fuck kind of way to talk is that? Before he could say so, the girl turned to look at another girl who was waving at her, trying to get her attention. “I’m going to go get a seat,” she said, and disappeared. The boy stood there, still holding her jacket, with a fixed smile on his face.
Dante felt sorry for him. “You don’t have a chance. You know that, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“She doesn’t consider you to be a potential sex partner. Maybe you can go for the mercy fuck, but if I were you, I’d try elsewhere.”
The boy stopped laughing. “You’re making a mistake, really. We’re just friends.”
You can’t con a con artist, kiddo. “You carry her jacket as if it were the queen’s ermine stole, you always walk a step or two behind her, and when you touch her, your pupils dilate. While she was flirting with me, you shot me glares of pure hatred, and you did your best to stand between me and her. You have a crush on her, I get that, but the girl is a stone bitch.”
“She’s not a bitch,” the boy retorted, breathing heavily and long past denying anything.
“Do you go to pick her up if it’s raining? Do you let her copy your classwork? Do you text her at night with little heart emojis?”
The boy didn’t reply.
“Well, she sure doesn’t do any of those things. She tells you all about the boys she likes. She pretends not to notice that you’re head over heels in love with her, but trust me, she knows it, and she talks to her girlfriends about it. No doubt adding that you’re just so sweet, or whatever bullshit you kids say nowadays. She’s a manipulator, and as long as it keeps working, she’s going to go on manipulating. Maybe in a few years, she’ll understand that it’s not the way to act, but actually, I’d bet the opposite.”
Tears were starting to well up in the boy’s eyes. “No. You’re wrong.”
“I’ll bet that you even gave her the little necklace she’s wearing. I’ll bet that it took you some time and effort to find it. You didn’t want to be too explicit, but you were hoping she’d pick up on the subtle underlying meaning. She only wears it when she’s with you, because she’s ashamed of it. She hides it under her blouse.” Dante lit a cigarette. “If you want my advice, turn and run. That’s your only hope. She might even come after you.”
“You’re a bastard,” said the boy, turning on his heel to go. “And there’s no smoking here!”
“Not even outdoors?”
“That’s right, because this is a university, not a freak show!” The boy marched off at a quickstep. Dante shook his head. I tried, kid. But it did no good. A heart in love doesn’t want to listen to mere reason: he’d been through it himself more times than he cared to remember.
Just then the idiot came back with a bottle of water and a small cup of espresso that he handed Dante. “You can’t—”
“—smoke, I know, they told me.” Dante took one last drag and tossed the butt down the sewer grate.
“Secondhand smoke . . .”
“I understand.”
“Have you gotten to know any of the students?”
“Yes.” Dante took a drink of water, clearing the sweetish, floury clump that had formed in his throat. The Pregabalin was already starting to take effect. “A friendly chat.”
In the distance, he could see the boy and the girl arguing loudly, but he couldn’t make out the words. He lowe
red his gaze to the cup of espresso. Which, as far as he was concerned, wasn’t really coffee at all, just a faded phantom of a cup of coffee. After all, what’s left when you boil preblended coffee grounds, and then you evaporate that with blasts of hot air, only to dissolve the resulting powder again in a dollop of water, and never at the right temperature? What you get is dishwater, which was exactly what this swill smelled of. Dante sniffed at it, identifying head notes of burlap, rancidity, and the unpleasant odor of Rio Coffee, as well as a whiff of plastic and even a faint aftertaste of machine oil. He couldn’t have drunk this even if it had been the last liquid in the desert. “I’ve already had a couple today,” he said. Ten, to tell the truth, but he’d have twice that many before sundown.
The idiot pointed to the seats. By now they were nearly all full, and there were even people standing in the aisles. “I think we’re ready. I’ll just say a couple of words. In observance of the mourning.”
There’s just no escaping it today, thought Dante. “Thanks.”
Professor Idiot Degli Uberti spoke for ten minutes or so about the dead people on the train and the importance of remaining united in the face of terror, in a high-flown prose style that made Dante shiver the whole time. When it was his turn to talk, he said nothing for a few seconds. He just stared back at the eyes staring at him, which seemed ready to suck him in and gulp him down. How many of them were here to listen to what he had to say, and how many were hoping that he’d do something bizarre, in accordance with his reputation, which had surely preceded him? He was tempted to turn and run, poof! and gone with the wind, powering down his cell phone and ignoring the emails from everyone who would take offense at his behavior. There was a time when that was exactly what he would have done, when he wouldn’t have stood there, trying to find the right words. But he couldn’t do that anymore.
He sighed, and the mouthful of air that filled his lungs shook him out of his immobility, hushing the buzz of voices. “Good morning, everyone, thanks for coming today. I’m going to ask you for this next hour to forget about the sad moment and instead free your minds, otherwise we’ll wind up talking about nothing but the train. Can anyone here give me a definition of conspiracy theory? No one? Listen, if you’re not going to help me, this is going to take forever . . .” Nice wisecrack, keep it up, he scolded himself.
Someone let out a little laugh, just to be polite, but it broke the leaden atmosphere. “Okay, I’ll do it. Conspiracy theories are Band-Aids, because they cover wounds in the narrative of the world we live in. You like that? Okay, it’s bullshit, something I made up just now.”
This time, a few people really laughed. Dirty words always did the trick.
Dante went on, just slightly refreshed. “Conspiracy theories are awkward attempts to give answers that can mitigate our anxiety in the face of events that seem inexplicable or destabilizing. Events that catch us off guard, like 9/11 or last night’s train, which make us suffer, events such as the death of a public figure, or that let us dream of a better world, like the idea that there are such things as cars that can run on drinking water but which have been covered up by the oil lobby. Conspiracy theories are almost never capable of offering plausible responses, but they do have the advantage of identifying the hole in the official narrative, if there is one, which has been painstakingly assembled to cover up evildoing and lies. Not always, though. Sometimes they’re pure delirium—like, say, chemtrails—but quite often . . .” His words poured out confidently, more and more surely as Dante realized that his audience was listening to him with real interest, forgetting to stare at the bad hand that he concealed in the black glove, the one that the Father had forced him to massacre brutally with hammer blows.
Toward the end of the lesson, he moved on to his strong suit. He sketched out two caricatures, of Elvis and of JFK, on the paper hanging off the easelboard. He had a reasonably good technique, however rudimentary the sketch, and the students applauded when he was done. “You know, of course,” he said, pointing to the caricatures, “that Elvis is connected to the Kennedy assassination?”
There was more laughter.
“No, no, I’m not joking,” Dante continued. “And like all conspiracy theories, it’s based in part on true facts or plausible interpretations. Fact: Elvis had been in a relationship with the actress Ann-Margret, whom he had met on the set of Viva Las Vegas. Fact: Ann-Margret was a friend of Marilyn Monroe. Fact: Before she died, Marilyn Monroe had a relationship with President Kennedy. Fact: In the last years of his life, Elvis was obsessed with the threat of communism. Fact: Dr. Max Jacobson was Kennedy’s personal physician and had dealings with Elvis; he provided them both with amphetamines and stimulants to get them back on their feet, hence the nickname Dr. Feelgood.” He smiled. “They just don’t have doctors like that anymore when you need one.”
There was more laughter, and Dante grinned with mischievous satisfaction: his exhibitionist instinct contrasted sharply with his pathological shyness.
“As you can see,” he went on, “there’s only one degree of separation between the two figures, but before you can graft in a proper conspiracy theory, you need other elements. A spectacular death, like Kennedy’s assassination, full of what seem to be suspicious moments. Could Oswald really have fired three shots without anyone else’s help and hit the president twice, with bull’s-eye shots, in a moving car? Why was there an armed sentinel standing guard in front of Kennedy’s hospital room and refusing to let anyone in, not even the widow? Did the bullet really expel Kennedy’s brain from his skull, or was it removed later? How on earth did Jack Ruby get close enough to Oswald to shoot him while he was under police surveillance? I could go on.”
Dante took a gulp of water from the bottle he held in one hand. “But even this might not have been enough to trigger the legend, if it hadn’t been that Kennedy was such a beloved and well-known figure everywhere around the world, to the verge almost of sainthood. Like Elvis himself.” He waved his bad hand at the two caricatures. “Let’s add other details that have never been proved but never entirely debunked. Elvis had a rare copy of the Zapruder film of the gunshots that killed JFK, which he screened obsessively; one of Elvis’s bodyguards had been a Secret Service agent; one of Ann-Margret’s lovers worked for the KGB . . . and we have all the ingredients necessary to bake up a nice, rich cake.” He smiled again. “And here’s the cake. Elvis discovers through his doctor, who was very close to Kennedy, that the president had ordered the murder of Marilyn with barbiturate suppositories. Elvis tells Ann-Margret, who convinces him to avenge her friend. To do that, Elvis mobilizes his friends at the CIA and in the Las Vegas Mafia, who are more than happy to help him out. According to other variants, it was Ann-Margret who convinced him at the instigation of her friend in the KGB, and it was actually Elvis himself who fired the shots, with his own rifle.”
This time it was a roar of laughter, and Dante waited for it to die down.
“But that’s only a fairy tale, of course, ginned up to help us get over our horror in the aftermath of something unthinkable. The same thing happened with Marilyn’s suicide, because she was a sex symbol who everyone assumed was happy, and with the death of Elvis, the world’s most famous singer. There are various theories about his death, too, as you know. The first, of course, is that he’s still alive and living in a retirement home for penniless artists. Joe Lansdale wrote a novella with that plot, by the way. But the second theory is that he was killed by John Lennon, who was jealous of his success. Don’t worry, his death was avenged by Michael Jackson. And someone else took vengeance for Lennon, though I still don’t know who.”
More laughter and a round of applause. Satisfied, Dante opened the floor for questions. A female student with an enormous head of red hair raised her hand. “According to what you say, Professor—”
“I’m not a professor, I’m just a passionate fan of the subject,” he hammed it up. The young woman was attractive.
“Excuse me. According to what you say, Signor Torre, what you h
ave to say about the connections between your kidnapping and the CIA is also a conspiracy theory. There’s no evidence in support of it.”
Dante had expected the question, because someone always asked it. “Fact: my real name isn’t Dante Torre, but during my imprisonment, the Father canceled all my memories of my past and implanted a set of new memories. I don’t even know if I really was born in Cremona. Fact: the Father had financiers behind him that we can’t track down, as well as connections to the armed forces. Fact: it has been impossible to establish the identity of the Father’s accomplice, whom even today we refer to as the German, and who is in prison. Fact: the CIA had a branch of studies, MKUltra, that was interested in the alteration of consciousness by means of tests performed on human beings. Everything else was my own deduction.”
“You were a child, and he was a lunatic who had you under his thumb for years,” said another student. “Isn’t that enough to explain it all?”
“Not in my view. But I’ve said it too many times, and it didn’t do a bit of good or change anything.”
“The MKUltra experiments were ended in the seventies,” said the student with the head of red hair. “And they were never carried out on Italian soil. It’s hard to imagine how the Father might have been involved with them.”
“Yes, from what we know, that’s the case. But do we know everything? In 1973 the CIA director, Helms, ordered the destruction of all documents on MKUltra. What we’ve managed to find out is reconstructed from the few documents that survived and from eyewitness testimony—just the tip of the iceberg, according to everyone in the know.”
“You never found any solid evidence, and the magistrates who’ve investigated the Father’s organization closed the case,” said another young man.
Dante raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay. You’re right. And that’s the problem.” He made a face of self-deprecating irony. “It’s true of my case, just as it is for Kennedy: if there is no evidence, then we have nothing to talk about. What I was trying to tell you today isn’t to believe in nothing or to believe in everything but always to ask yourselves questions. If someone hands you a prepackaged truth, go ahead and unwrap the package and look inside. It doesn’t matter whether you get this truth from a politician, a newspaper, a policeman, or someone like me. Go ahead and check it out. Always seek out your own answers. Which is what I’m trying to do, even here with you today.”
Kill the Angel Page 6