“Padua—on the American bases?”
“In the mid-seventies. Lotta Continua sent him there, but he never finished the sociology course he was supposed to give. The parents complained—a couple of girls pregnant by Christmas. The rector told him to take the pay and forget about lectures.”
“You knew his first wife, signora?”
Lia Guerra leaned back in the chaise longue. “Bettina still writes occasionally. A nice woman—terribly working-class, of course, ignorant and impressed by money. The great, great mistake of Tino’s youth, but Bettina worshipped the ground he walked on. Now a grandmother, the woman still talks about Tino as if he’s just popped out for a packet of cigarettes. After all these years, after all Tino’s women, she still thinks he’s coming back.”
“Coming back from the grave?”
“Bettina’s son worked at BRAMAN for a summer—but he wasn’t happy there. He didn’t like Sicily and he didn’t get on with his father—they were too alike. Jimmy’s now married and works for the Banca del Lavoro. I saw them all—grandmother and grandchild—only six months ago when I was in Turin.” There was a softness in her voice. “The baby has Tino’s looks.”
“Why stay in Rome?” It was Pisanelli who spoke. “Signora, wouldn’t you be happier in your native Piemonte? Happier in Turin.”
“I have to work for a living.” She gave Pisanelli a friendly glance. “Until BRAMAN was liquidated in 1994, I had a well-paying job. A job I considered important.” She smiled, more to herself than to the two men. “I didn’t want to lose the contact with Tino.”
“Contact? Gracchi had married. He had a family of his own.”
Lia Guerra said dreamily, “Being with Tino was like being with Father Christmas.”
“You still believe in Father Christmas?”
She retorted, “I needed to believe in something, commissario.” The face had lost its dreaminess. “When I was kid, I used to screw up my eyes and pray that my real mother would come and find me. I never wanted to believe the woman who shared my father’s bed was my real mother. I prayed, hoping Jesus would hear me. I believed in Jesus then—but there is no Jesus. And there’s no revolution. The revolution, Lotta Continua—they fooled me with their proletariat just as the priests had fooled me with Jesus. The working class didn’t need me or Tino—they never had.” She added thoughtfully, “It was me who needed Tino. He was my sole reason for living.”
Trotti nodded.
“Tino made me feel important—and happy. You see, I was the only woman he ever loved, and we made each other complete—just by being together. In your wretched little town—all those years ago now. We were young and very happy.”
“You should’ve married him.”
“Tino wanted to marry me, but in those days I felt my first duty was to the Revolution.”
“You’d have saved his father a lot of embarrassment.”
“Tino had to be true to himself.” She added, “Anyway, Tino wasn’t the most important thing in his father’s life.”
“Didn’t stop Gracchi’s threatening me with his father’s political clout.”
“Bravado.” Lia Guerra smiled. “He knew you wouldn’t touch him—Tino hadn’t kidnapped anybody.”
“You and Gracchi may’ve known that—I didn’t.”
“You met Tino in 1978. Aldo Moro’d been kidnapped and the country was in a state of shock. His father felt Tino’d chosen a foolish time to get arrested.”
“All times are foolish for getting arrested.”
“Tino’d done nothing wrong. As I remember, Signor Gracchi had a lot of respect for Commissario Trotti.”
“His son didn’t. I was a Fascist—that’s what he called me.”
Lia Guerra laughed, her chin tilting upward. The neck was pale, thin and strong. “Tino loved play-acting. More than a journalist or politician or intellectual, Tino should’ve been an actor. Always playing out some new role. One day he was the cop, the next the robber.”
“That’s how he ended up playing a corpse?”
Even the sounds from the street below seemed muffled.
“You couldn’t understand him, commissario.”
“Supposing I wanted to.”
“Tino got into television journalism because he loved playing to the gallery. The center of attraction with the cameras pointing at him and, throughout the province of Trapani, tens of thousands of people drinking in his words—that’s what Tino loved. Prime-time.”
Trotti frowned.
“His news bulletin went out three times a day. But it was just after eight that people would leave the other channels, Berlusconi and the RAI, just to see Gracchi berating the local politicians in the evening news. Laughing at the politicians. Baiting the Mafia.”
“The Mafia that didn’t kill him?”
“Tino was the victim of his own acting. In Trento and in Padua, in your horrid little city and then in Sicily.” Guerra tucked her legs beneath her. The cat watched her with sleepy eyes.
“His death didn’t come as a surprise to you?”
“As soon as he got in front of the television cameras for the first time—Tino was like a moth trapped in the light. An outsider who thought he could change Sicily? Of course they were going to kill him. Everyone could see it coming—everyone except Tino.”
“You warned him?”
“Everyone warned him. In Sicily, there are your friends. And then there are the friends of your friends. The television station warned him. People in the street warned him.” Lia Guerra shook her head. “I don’t pretend to know who pulled the trigger. I just know that I’ve been terribly miserable without him. Miserable knowing the telephone will never ring again for me to hear his voice.” She took a deep breath. “A couple of times I took the plane and flew to Trapani for a long weekend. I thought being with people who’d known Tino would make the pain seem more bearable.”
Lia Guerra took another cigarette from the packet on the chaise longue.
“The bastards all wanted Tino out of the way. All of them.”
41: Parquetry
“I stayed in Tino’s room in Trapani. A tiny, cramped place a long way from the Dovecot.”
“Where?”
“The Dovecot was the management building at BRAMAN. The last three months he slept by himself in the room—I never realized it was his punishment.” Lia Guerra paused. “Sleeping in his bed brought me closer to him. It was as if we were together again.”
“A bit obsessed, weren’t you?”
“Very obsessed,” Lia Guerra retorted. “Obsessed and miserable and terribly lonely.” She looked at the two men defiantly. “They say time can heal everything. How long do I have to wait?”
“Some pain you take with you to the grave.”
Lia Guerra gave the old policeman an appraising smile. “You know about that, commissario?”
Trotti did not reply.
“The only two men I’ve ever loved—both of them murdered. And I’m still alive—an ex-heroin addict and I’m still alive.” Her smile slowly died, but her eyes remained on Trotti’s. “I’d sit in the little bedroom at BRAMAN and I could see Tino. I really could see him, you know. Just as I can see you two now. Driving his Duna back to BRAMAN or walking towards me, just as he used to when we were so happy together, commissario.”
“Happy together? Gracchi was married—with wife and daughter.”
“I gave him something he never found with them.”
Trotti asked, “You got on well with Lakshmi?”
“Tino’s daughter’s never liked me. Her mother gave her everything—and just like her mother, Lakshmi’s always seen me as a rival for her father’s affection, even after his death. You know what women are like.”
“Pisanelli here knows all about women.”
Lia Guerra lowered her voice. “In Tino’s bedroom one evening . . .”
“Yes?”
“A wooden chest of drawers.” Lia Guerra’s legs were still tucked under her thighs and for a moment she looked like a girl, small and fragile. All harshness had vanished from her face. “The little chest of drawers his father had made.”
The two men instinctively moved forward on their seats.
“I recognized the piece of furniture.”
Pisanelli, pale and attentive, held the mobile telephone between his clasped hands. His elbows were now on his thighs.
“Very good with his hands, the architect Gracchi, and he liked to make things—things he’d give away. Tino always said his father found it a lot easier to give things than to give himself.”
“It’s not always easy to be a father.”
Lia Guerra answered, “Not easy to be a child.” She took a lungful of cigarette smoke before squashing the butt into an ashtray on the cushion beside her, “Last time I’d seen that chest of drawers was in the seventies, back when Tino’d broken up with Bettina. Tino and I had a little place that belonged to his parents in the city center. In that awful city of yours, commissario, with its fogs and its mosquitoes and its dour citizenry. I can remember the chest well—inlaid with delicate parquetry. Tino’d brought it down from Turin in the old Cinquecento. Fifteen years later, there it was, the same chest standing in front of me in Sicily. Been there the entire time and I’d never noticed.”
“Why not?”
“Dusty and badly chipped. The varnish’d flaked off and of course, the parquetry was hidden beneath a lace mat.”
Lia Guerra’s eyes held the attention of both men. They watched her carefully. Pisanelli’s mouth was slightly open.
“It must have been about midnight—around Christmas time—December, 1992—and it was exceptionally cold. I was in his bed at BRAMAN and I couldn’t sleep. It was as if Tino was there, as if he needed to tell me something. I’d thrown down the book I was trying to read and as it fell, the book tousled the lace mat.” She nodded. “I recognized the old chest.”
“And?”
“Fate was guiding me.”
“Fate’d taken a long time.”
“Despite the cold, I was sweating. Tino was telling me what I had to do. I clambered out of bed—I swear his hand was guiding me. I took hold of the drawer and I pulled at it. It wouldn’t budge. Something was stuck to the underside of the drawer, something was wedged there. So I tugged and I tugged. And all the papers came tumbling out onto the floor.”
Pisanelli asked, “What papers, signora?” His voice was strained and the Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
She looked at him. “Sheets of paper, various folders. Everything spilled out all over the floor. And I saw the fax.”
“What fax?”
“The first page’d disappeared.” She put her head back and closed her dark eyes.
Pisanelli asked again, “What fax, signora?”
When she spoke, Trotti was reminded of a girl reciting her catechism. “Essentially false, unkind, unsuitable.” That’s what it said. That’s what the fax said. “Essentially false, unkind, unsuitable. And dangerous.”
“Who said that?”
“Chiara and I must ask you to vacate your room in the Dovecot and find somewhere else to sleep within BRAMAN. As sign of our disapproval. Chiara can help you move your belongings. With all best wishes, Giovanni.”
“A conflict between Gracchi and Verga?”
“Essentially false, unkind, unsuitable. And dangerous.” Her eyes remained closed.
“What conflict, signora?”
“Nobody’d ever mentioned anything. Not to me, not for three years. Just their crocodile tears.”
“You shown the fax to anyone?”
Her head was still held back, her eyes were still closed. “Chiara Gracchi.”
“What did she say?”
“Why should I doubt her word—the word of the grieving widow?”
“What did she say?”
Lia Guerra opened her eyes. “A little squabble between old friends.”
“Squabble over what?”
“She didn’t want to say.”
“But you found out?”
Lia Guerra tapped the dog-eared magazine that lay beside her on the chaise longue. “Yes.” She nodded. “I found out.”
42: Beirut
Prince: What is BRAMAN?
Gracchi: When I was a student at Trento, back in 1968, I lived on a commune with several companions. With people like Antonio Cocco and his wife Alice—altogether there were about twelve of us. One of the marvelous moments in my life.
Prince: But not for long.
Gracchi: Unfortunately not. Antonio’s been in prison now for fourteen years as a convicted terrorist, while his wife Alice, so gentle and timid, and a wonderful violinist, was gunned down by the Carabinieri in 1975—Public Enemy Number One because she had sprung the man she loved from jail. All that was to come later—les lendemains qui déchantent, as the French say. Antonio and Alice—in those days still practicing Catholics—joined the Red Brigades. Not satisfied with analyzing history, they wanted to speed it up.
Prince: You didn’t join the Red Brigades?
Gracchi: I remained a poor hack with Lotta Continua. We went our separate ways, but I never forgot the experience of communal living. Then in India, many, many years later, I lived a similar experience. I found great serenity at the ashram in Poona—but when Guru Anish went off to California and his secretary disappeared to Switzerland with the Rolls Royce and all the cash, I was seriously pissed off. Pissed off and lost. Losing the guru was like losing my father. That’s when Giovanni Verga suggested an ashram in Sicily, where he had this wonderful place. Giovanni started talking to me about his vineyards and olive groves and dovecot in Trapani. A commune based on the same values as Poona and built around Zen philosophy. I agreed immediately. The idea of working with addicts came later.
Prince: You returned to Italy in 1981.
Gracchi: Giovanni and I set up an autonomous commune. My wife and daughter were with me and BRAMAN was a great experience. I’m not somebody who’s concerned with material wealth—my first marriage had floundered precisely because I bought my wife flowers instead of a car. In Sicily, I at last found exactly what I was looking for, what I needed—simplicity and purpose.
Prince: And the addicts?
Gracchi: You know, everything’s connected. I belong to the baby boom—I was born in 1946—and when I was coming to manhood, like most other people of my generation, I could see Italy was sick. You didn’t need a crystal ball to see things had to change. That’s why we set up Lotta Continua.
Prince: For the revolution?
Gracchi: The people who came after us, five—ten years younger—they saw that, for all our talk, we’d gone the same way as our parents. Revolution? Lotta Continua had become Stalinist. A hierarchical and rigid structure—and when we voted ourselves out of existence at Rimini, it was precisely because Lotta Continua had failed to recognize the role of the feminists. The new generation—the indiani metropolitani—had none of our beliefs. Nor our ideals. They were anarchic because they were cynical—and central to their anarchy were drugs. Heroin was their revolution. By 1977, the stuff was flooding into Italy from Lebanon where it helped pay for the war, and we began seeing people overdosing in the street. People who were a lot younger than me and Gianni. Even women and young girls. I felt something had to be done. My generation’d lost the revolution—perhaps this was the battle we were supposed to be fighting. I believed addicts could find serenity in much the same way that I had found serenity in India. I managed to convince Giovanni Verga this had to be the purpose behind BRAMAN.
Prince: Yet for years, you advocated mind altering drugs.
Gracchi: If you mean pot, I still do. [A laugh.] Fortunately, I know the difference between soft and hard drugs. I know about the e
ffects of heroin—I’ve had my share of bad trips. I thank God I never fell into that trap. One of the few mistakes I haven’t made in my life. As it is, the girl I was going to marry got into the heavy stuff—and addiction.
Prince: That’s why you went off to India?
Gracchi: By the time she ended up in a clinic in Switzerland, it was way too late for any talk of a future between us. There were things the drugs had killed for good. Things like innocence and intimacy. Things like sharing. Perhaps that’s why I set up the rehabilitation center. My way of making amends to the woman I loved.
43: Aid
“I was reading Prince last night,” Trotti remarked. “I fell asleep.”
“The interview gives the impression Tino was the founder of BRAMAN.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“That’s what everybody thought.”
Pisanelli asked, “What’s the problem?”
“Verga was irked by the interview. Giovanni Verga liked to see himself as a guru. Of course, BRAMAN was Tino’s idea. Verga’s creativity was limited to producing pornographic magazines packaged with gift dildos or magic love potions. That’s how he got rich in the seventies. He was the founder of Prince—but sold it off in the eighties when he moved on to better things. Better ways of making a lot of money—thanks to Tino. Giovanni Verga needed to be admired. He wanted everybody to think BRAMAN was his idea. You know Sicily?”
Trotti shook his head.
“Sicily is very Victorian. You can murder—but you mustn’t divorce. Giovanni Verga understood the mystical longings of his fellow islanders. He needed to put his past as a pornographer behind him. For himself, but also for the sake of his Socialist friends. Giovanni Verga was a political animal who never did anything without carefully considering all the ramifications. Especially political ramifications. He wanted the kudos of a guru, the aura. He needed to be seen as the founder of BRAMAN.” Lia Guerra faltered. “There was something else, too.”
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 11