‘Until this morning.’
‘I woke up in a bad mood.’
‘Me too.’ I threw the cigarette in the toilet. ‘Have I been here before?
‘No.’ Another step.
‘What is this place?’
‘This is our cultural centre. Downstairs there’s a prayer room and a playroom. This part, however, is mine. It’s where I give lessons.’
‘Judo?’
‘Karate.’
‘Why?’
‘Because these girls should learn how to defend themselves. The more extreme families seize their documents to keep them home, or they get beaten for wearing western-style clothing or even if they speak with other males. A girl who lives near here had her feet burned with an iron by her father who tried to keep her from going out.’
‘You should change religion.’
‘Religion has nothing to do with it. It’s ignorance.’
The last step brought her within a centimetre from me. I raised my face. Salima was beautiful and frightening at the same time with what she carried inside her. I reached out to take her hand.
Then the children began to scream.
5
When we looked into the gym, it seemed like the end of the world had come. The children were running everywhere, screaming and crying. A monster that looked like a robot was at the door with a semi-automatic in his hand. The robot yelled. ‘Stay still and calm. Where are your parents? Where are they?’ He repeated it again in French.
Salima ran into the middle of her students. I was paralysed. What the hell was going on? Aliens attacking? Daleks? Behind the first robot appeared a second and a third, and it was only then that I understood that they were men covered in full body armour. They also wore black balaclavas and helmets with dark visors. It was the Italian SWAT team, the Carabinieri Special Forces.
One of them walked up to Salima and grabbed her by the arm. ‘You shut these kids up, lady! You understand?’
I was scared that Salima would do one of her moves, but she was smarter than that. She didn’t fight back. Outside a helicopter thumped, hovering over the building. Blades of light cut across the windows. The walls shook.
Salima yelled something in Arabic. The girls shouted louder. I didn’t understand a thing. The noise from the helicopter was unbearable. Then pieces of glass started to fly though the room. A SWAT officer saw me and pointed the rifle. ‘On the ground, now!’
More officers came from the stairs. The helicopter hovered. The children screamed and cried. Through the large windows, balaclavas and gun muzzles poked from outside. There were radios, sirens, explosions, commotion and screaming.
‘I said get down!’
I complied.
He ran to me and patted me down, then ripped out my wallet and took out my ID. Another tied my wrists behind my back with something. They weren’t handcuffs but they worked just as well. The blood stopped flowing to my fingers.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
The SWAT officer pulled me to my feet. ‘Move.’
Salima didn’t receive the same treatment as me, no cuffs, maybe because she was a woman, but they dragged her with me down the stairs.
‘The children!’ she said, trying to go back. Another SWAT officer pushed her back. It must have been the confusion of the moment, but I finally reacted.
‘Hey, you piece of shit!’ I yelled but as soon as I moved in his direction the one behind me hit me, in the back with the rifle butt. He probably didn’t mean to hit me so hard. In the end, I was a well-dressed white male in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I was on the edge of the step and I lost my balance. With my hands tied I couldn’t grab onto anything and I fell against the handrail, smashing it.
I was inside Oreste’s. Wonderful, nothing’s changed. The dirty tables, the wasted patrons who try their best to keep their eyes open, the drunken housewives, the rancid stench of fried food …
Oreste reaches out from behind the bar to say hello. Wow, Oreste’s old. His moustache is white and he’s lost his hair. ‘Hey, look who’s here! Trafficante!’ he yells. ‘Where’ve you been all this time? C’mon, I’ll make you my special cocktail.’
Oreste slides me a glass filled with a brown liquid. I smell it, the odour is disgusting, I cough, and it tastes like …
*
Ammonia.
‘Good, breathe.’
I coughed again. I opened my eyes and saw a paramedic in an orange jacket. I tried to get up but the she kept me down. ‘Wait. You fell hard.’
My head hurt and I felt like vomiting. I was lying on a stretcher. Around me was the sound of yelling, boots and broken glass. I leaned on my elbow and a spasm of pain drilled into my head.
‘I said lay down,’ she repeated.
‘Get the hell off me!’
I tried again and staggered to my feet. The stretcher where I was laid out was in the middle of the blind alley. A group of cops stuck out from a van with mounted lights, lit up as if it was daytime. Along both sides, Arabs were lined up with their faces against the wall. There were at least fifty of them; their hands were held back with white plastic ties. That’s what they had used. I looked at my wrists; they were crossed with red marks. They hurt almost as bad as my head. I touched it. I had a lump on my forehead as big as a melon. Bastards.
The SWAT team shook down the Arabs one at a time, keeping them up with kicks and slaps. Some of them had bloody faces; many of them were in shirts and T-shirts, and a couple were shoeless. One SWAT officer looked at me when I stood up. He had my ID in his hand and gave it back to me. ‘You may leave now, sir. Let this one through!’ he said to his colleagues.
‘Where’s Salima?’ I didn’t see her against the wall.
‘Sir, I said that you can leave, so get out of here!’
He took me by the arm and dragged me out of the alley. There were more people. Women, a sea of them. The call centre was under guard with more members of the SWAT team outside. The street was full of armoured cars and police cruisers; the restaurants had pulled down their metal blinds. Bodies hit against me and voices spoke every language in the world except my own. There was also a fire engine with the ladder leaning against the window of Salima’s building. The SWAT team was going in and out. I approached a woman who was covered with a veil that exposed only her eyes and the tips of her toes. ‘Have you seen Salima? Salima, do you understand?’
She shook her head and went away. I tried again and again and again, but no one understood me. An Italian man came up to me. I saw him arguing with a SWAT officer who blocked access to the alleyway. He was about forty, wearing a sheepskin coat and round glasses. ‘Excuse me, are you the man who was taken out by stretcher?’ he asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘I need to talk to you for five minutes.’
A squad car of regular cops without body armour spread into the crowd, which immediately opened for them and closed behind them.
The guy watched them pass. ‘I can’t believe what they’re doing here.’ We pushed through the crowd until we reached a small space in the street in front of a closed café. I sat down on a concrete block used to prevent cars from parking there. It had been painted over to look like a penguin. My head pulsated along with my shoulder and I still had the smell of ammonia (my cocktail) in my nose. I reached for my cigarettes but they weren’t there. Damn. I went from one nightmare to another.
‘It’s an anti-terrorism operation,’ the guy said. ‘I don’t think that this is only happening in Milan.’
I thought of the Red Brigades before remembering the present time. ‘Are they looking for … suicide bombers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are there any here?’ Ragiul and his friends didn’t seem like the type but you never know.
‘Who can say? Usually, they find someone with a bit of hash in their pockets or some illegal immigrants without permits. They arrest them, keep them in jail, and then move them to a detention centre for a few months. Afterwards they deport them. Tomorrow you�
��ll read in the newspapers that the operation was a success.’
‘Does this happen often?’ I asked.
‘It’s the war.’
This war sucked. I wasn’t used to having it in my own backyard. A line of Arabs were escorted into a carabinieri van with tinted windows. Jail and then the detention centre. I wasn’t exactly sure what the latter was but I just hoped that it wouldn’t happen to me.
‘A man from the Islamic Cultural Centre called me,’ he continued. ‘When I got here the SWAT team had already gone in. Not that it would have mattered much if I’d got here first.’ He spoke calmly but beneath it all he was as angry as a hell. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself; my name is Mirko Bastoni.’
‘Santo Denti. Do you know Salima?’
‘Fares? Of course, she’s one of the activists here.’
‘Is she OK? We were together before I went flying down the stairs.’
‘She’s fine. She’s in a courtyard with the children. They’re keeping them there until they finish searching the apartments.’
‘Is she going to be deported?’
‘No, she’s got a visa.’
At least she’s got that. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘I’m a lawyer. You were assaulted and Salima said that you were present when they came in and scared the children. Your testimony could be useful in our attempts to release the detainees.’
‘Will it make a difference?’
He smiled. ‘Sometimes you do something because it’s the right thing to do, not because it will make a difference. Can I count on you?’
I shook my head. ‘No way. I have too much going on right now to add anything else.’
That was an understatement. ‘If you change your mind, just tell Salima.’
‘OK.’ Then I had an idea: honest and generous. Why not? I didn’t know anyone else like this guy. ‘So, I imagine that these people don’t pay you, right?’
‘Sometimes it happens but not often. Why?’
I took the letter from the procuratore and passed it to him. ‘Maybe you need a client with money?’
He moved under the light and skimmed over it and then passed it back. ‘Did you do it?’
‘I don’t think so, so what do you think? Are you up for it?’
‘I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment, as I’m sure you can imagine. Call me tomorrow and I’ll see if we have someone at the law firm who’s free.’
He gave me his business card while the mess in the street was dying down. I gave him my number; I knew it by heart now and he saved it on his phone. The armoured cars rumbled away, the firemen’s ladder folded back down into place. ‘I’m going to talk to Salima. Are you coming?’
I followed him into the courtyard behind the call centre on the other side of a line of regular cops. I saw her. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a sweater that she had got from who knows where to cover her karate suit. The girls, along with about thirty boys, were drawing on a wall with coloured chalk. She consoled the ones who were crying and pretended that everything was OK. Ragiul was helping out, playing football with the older kids.
It was like something out of a tearjerker book, had it not been for the carabinieri with semi-automatic weapons and parents with their hands up. Mirko showed his card and the cops stepped aside to let him pass. He went in and I stopped. Salima ran to hug the lawyer; she looked at me over his shoulder. We stared at one another, and she stopped smiling.
I turned and pushed through the crowd that was still packed into the street. I took the first tram in Via Vitruvio. I changed, following the tram signs that also indicated the waiting time. The route had been changed since my time but I managed to orient myself. I didn’t sit down because I was afraid I’d never get up again. About halfway there I saw a chemist’s sign. I got off and bought a pack of painkillers, paying through a small window just like junkies do when they’re scoring. Behind the hole there was bulletproof glass and video cameras. I swallowed half the box, no water, and I tasted again the sting of ammonia and dust.
Another tram. I was the only one on board except for a couple of Chinese teenagers holding hands and listening to a tiny white Walkman. There were very few cars on the street. A utility truck was parked; men were fixing some tracks, a drunk was arguing with a cat. I didn’t go home; it wasn’t just because of the bombs. That place held the unknown that the Ad Exec had left for me, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out anymore. I had to go back for sure but everything that I did brought out something that confused and frightened the hell out of me. I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours and my head was pounding.
I closed my eyes. SWAT. Children. Foetuses. Nausea. Pain. I took the bus to Linate airport and I got out a bit before the last stop. The only motel that I had ever been to in Milan was called ‘Cupid.’ A model used to live there; her nightly dinner was a glass of water and a gram of coke. Then she’d let you screw her as if she were already dead.
The Cupid Motel was still there and looked more or less the same. There was a booth that let you pay without getting out of the car. It had a quiet and discreet atmosphere, just like in the advertisements. The guy at the reception didn’t even raise his eyes from his newspaper (Learn: Wi-Fi.) Credit card, zip. A bungalow between the trees. A lampshade with a red light.
I took off my coat and my shoes. I drank two small bottles of vodka from the mini-bar. I hit the bed. In the mirror on the ceiling there was a filthy bum with a bump on his forehead sticking out like a horn, and a sock with a hole in it. Another bottle of vodka. I killed it and threw it against the door to see what kind of a sound it’d make. Toc. I turned off the light and tossed and turned. I turned it back on again. I turned it off. I turned on the TV. There was a guy on it selling knives that could cut everything: shoes, stone slabs, hammers, frozen foods and even bread. On another channel a woman in a thong was touching herself while a series of phone numbers ran along the side. Underneath read: Hot Mistress. Shut Up and Enjoy. Girls Waiting. Horny Housewives. College Girls in Heat. There was a documentary about uranium dust. Soldiers were dropping dead after coming back from the front and no one cared. There was an old movie that I had already seen. Tits and ass. Inflatable mattresses. Shoe racks. Two lesbians.
Another bottle. Whisky, nausea and sharp pains in my back and my stomach. I managed to drag myself in the bathroom and vomited in the jacuzzi. I went back to bed. Something was trembling inside me. I heard sirens and screaming. I turned the light on and off. I tried to jerk off. I tried not to think about anything. Foetuses. Cops. War.
I sat on the step outside my door. It was cold and I like the cold. A woman came out from the bungalow next door. She had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a fur coat. She looked at me.
‘How much?’ I asked.
She didn’t say anything.
I took out a handful of euros from my wallet. ‘Hey. It could’ve been the last screw of my life. Who knows what would happen tomorrow. I also have credit cards, three, all different colours.’
A car got out of the bungalow garage. A man opened the door for the woman.
‘What did he want?’
‘Nothing. He’s wasted. Leave him alone.’
They left. I went back inside. I flipped through the channels again. I found one that showed music videos. There was one of Bob Dylan’s, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ I couldn’t believe it. I put the volume on full blast until the room rumbled. After five minutes the guy from the reception came. He came in using his key. He switched off the TV and looked at me.
‘What the hell do you think that you’re doing? Do I have to call the police?’
I got up and grabbed him by the collar.
‘I want to go back!’ I yelled. ‘I WANT TO GO BACK!’
Day Four
1
A carpet hair tickled my nose and I sneezed. I opened my eyes. I was stretched out on the floor again but at least this time it wasn’t on the toilet floor. My head throbbed but much less tha
n the night before. My tongue felt like I had a dead rat in my mouth. I only had fragmented and confused flashes of the past few hours … again. Before going to sleep, who knows why, I had drawn an enormous question mark on one of the mirrors using the complimentary toothpaste that was now floating in the clogged bathtub. The television was gone; I vaguely remembered that the reception guy had taken it away.
There was only a beer left in the mini-bar and I used it to quench my thirst. I popped back a few more anti-evil pills. In the mirror I looked dazed. The bump had gone down and had become a black bruise that went from my hairline to the bridge of my nose. Red eyes. On the phone I found three missed calls from Monica, two from the night before and one from eight-thirty this morning. It was now after nine.
Oh damn! Ustoni!
The reception guy who took my ID wasn’t the one from the night before. On the bill I found an added charge with the note Special Cleaning. I didn’t dare ask what it meant. I got a coffee from the vending machine, while the guy called me a taxi that then proceeded to deliver me to the place of punishment.
It was the same as the day before but everyone seemed a bit embarrassed to see me. I didn’t care and managed to get in with my swipe card on the second try. A messenger got into the lift and did his best not to look at me.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
He turned red and didn’t say a word.
Hey, Hello, How are you?
Rina had a pen in her hand when I walked in and she almost poked her eye out with it when she saw me.
‘Signor Denti, what happened to you?’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean why? You haven’t seen yourself? You look like a tramp.’ Monica had shot up from the other side of the wall.
‘Your face, what’s on your forehead?’
‘A bump.’
‘A bump, I can see it’s a bump. What happened?’
‘I fell off my bicycle.’
‘Since when do you ride a bike?’
‘What’s this, an interrogation?’
In a Heartbeat Page 11