He recognized the black BMW convertible parked at the corner of Via delle Capannelle. Paja’s blonde ponytail and Fieno’s black hair, shaven to the nape of the neck. Those two were a pair of rabid dogs who wouldn’t live to be twenty-five. A few years younger than him. Two pieces of shit coked to the marrow. And, just like him, raised in Cinecittà. They’d started out selling pills to schoolkids, when the Neapolitans ruled the roost. Then they’d started wagging their tails around the Anacleti family, the gypsy clan as ancient as the Colosseum, who were pushing every single gram of coke and hashish between Tor Bella Monaca and Piazza Tuscolo, between the Casilino quarter, Cinecittà, and Via Appia. People parked on a mountain of cash, and the only thing about them that was still gitano was their history, the occasional clown act in costume, their over-the-top weddings, their greed, and a herd of children, cousins, nephews, and grandchildren all registered with the city under the same name.
Rocco Anacleti. Paja and Fieno’s boss. Max’s boss.
Or at least, that’s what he thought.
Paja gestured toward Max with his forearm sticking out of the BMW’s window. His face betrayed all the jolly enthusiasm of a patient just sitting down in the dentist’s chair for a procedure.
“Hey, Nicce, you made it. You see, Fieno? The philosopher bothered to show up.”
Nicce. The Roman pronunciation and spelling of Nietzsche. That nickname, Nicce, was supposed to come as a compliment, it should have reminded him that the thesis he’d written on Kant was done out of love as well as a favor to his widowed mother who, luckily, was no longer alive to see him now. Instead it made him see red. It reminded him that out on the street, they were all the same. More of the bullshit he had to pretend he believed. He replied to Paja with a nod of his helmet and pulled out, following the BMW for the short stretch of Via Tuscolana, up to the intersection with Via del Casale Ferranti.
Abbas liked to work at night. The only thing he hadn’t gotten used to in all these years in Italy was the idea that work should correspond to routine office hours, to city regulations and not, instead, to the rhythm of the body and the needs of the business. He’d left the shop’s metal security shutter halfway up, and he’d worked for hours next to the little stereo that had been a gift from Farideh, his baby girl who had become too pretty and too grownup. He often thought, when he looked at her, of when her mother had died. Of how she had pressed close to him in the morgue of the Regina Elena Hospital, as they had looked down at the rigid body of the only other woman in his life. That day, Farideh had whispered to him that they’d make it, they’d survive. And that promise had become a prophecy. Farideh was his whole life. His anchor, his roots, his future. And that was why he always let her have her way. Even now, when she had started listening to the CDs by Plastic Wave and Kiosk, the dissident rock bands banished from Tehran. A music that he didn’t understand, but that Farideh loved. And that was too loud for him to be able to hear the noise of the car and the motorcycle that had pulled up in the street outside his shop.
Max just lifted the visor of the helmet and took a step toward Paja and Fieno as they were pulling ski masks over their heads.
“Well?
“We’re going in. You stay here. If anything happens,” Fieno muttered through the ski mask, “find a solution. You’re the philosopher, right?”
The two men pulled soft leather gloves out of their jeans pockets. They put them on with meticulous care. In every gesture, in every nuance of their voices, they were doing their best to imitate their great hero. Rocco Anacleti. They had been born slaves, and slaves they would remain for the rest of their lives. Samurai had taught him that a real man has no boss. A maestro, perhaps, but never a boss.
Paja and Fieno walked into the shop and pulled the metal security shutter down behind them, almost all the way to the ground. Max sat down, arms crossed, on the trunk of the BMW. The best place to keep an eye on the street.
Abbas found himself unexpectedly face to face with them. Paja slammed his right fist into Abbas’s face and broke his front teeth, flooding his mouth with blood. The Iranian sank to the floor, slamming his temple onto the pavement. His vision went dim. Still, he could glimpse the other man in a ski mask; he watched as the man pulled a grease-stained rag out of his cotton jacket. When he felt that rag being forced down his throat, he decided it was all over, and he tried to fight back with what little strength he could muster.
Completely pointless.
Paja dragged him over to one of the shop’s walls, next to some visible plumbing, tying his wrists to a pipe with a hemp cord. And it was at that point, flat on his back with his arms outspread like the Christ to which the Romans prayed, that Abbas began to understand.
Paja went over to the stereo and turned up the volume. And as the notes of Autotomy by Plastic Wave transformed the workshop into a sonic hallucination, Fieno bent over Abbas. The faces of the two men were practically touching, and now the old man could smell the stench of his torturer’s sweat and nicotine through the ski mask.
“Okay then, you fucking Iranian, you say you want your thousand euros, eh? Why, do you think that money belongs to you? Listen, remember you’re nothing but a zammammero. And we don’t have to pay zammammeri. Got it?”
Abbas’s pupils dilated, as his neck stretched in the spasm of what was meant to be an affirmation.
“What? You understand? No, you don’t understand. You asked for your money, you Moroccan. You sent a letter. You brought the lefties into it. . . It seems to me you made a mistake. What do you think, did you make a mistake? What? I can’t hear you! Speak a little louder, asshole, I can’t hear you!”
How long were those two going to take?
Max heard the volume of the music spike louder, and he could no longer restrain himself. To hell with Rocco Anacleti. He left the street and ducked into the shop.
Paja was holding a wooden board in his left hand. In his right, he was gripping a mallet that he’d found in a tool chest. He gestured for Fieno to sit down on Abbas’s supine body, to prevent it from shaking and to restrain any unexpected jerking of the legs. Then he squatted down next to the old man.
“All right, now you tell me, you fucking Iranian, where are we going to start? With the left hand or your right? Which hand do you prefer to use for your shitty work? Which hand do you use to grab the money when you ask to be paid? I didn’t understand you. Did you just say that it makes no difference? It makes no difference? Then let’s start with the right hand, because when has anybody’s left hand ever been good for anything?”
Max lunged at Fieno.
“Leave him be! He’s just an old man!”
Fieno tumbled to the ground, caught off guard by the sudden violence of the attack. But he was immediately back on his feet. He extracted the gat he had tucked in his belt at the base of his spine and aimed it right at Max’s forehead. Right between the eyes.
“This is a .38, asshole. Just try breathing and I’ll open your fucking head on your shoulders!”
Max stepped back to the security blind, putting his hands in the air. Fieno turned to Paja.
“Let’s make this little faggot watch the whole performance, from start to finish.”
Paja arranged the wooden board between the palm of Abbas’s hand—and now the old man was grunting like a beast being butchered—and the pipe to which his wrist was tied. He lifted the mallet over his shoulder and then brought it down one, twice, three times, five times on the craftsman’s slender fingers, on the knuckles, on the fingernails. Until all he was looking at was a purplish paw of swollen flesh.
Abbas passed out.
Paja turned to look at Fieno, who was still holding the pistol aimed right between Max’s eyes.
“Should we call it a night here?”
“I said the whole performance.”
“But the Iranian is out cold. He can’t see a damn thing.”
“He’ll wake up. A
nd what he sees when he wakes up is what matters most.”
“All right.”
Paja threw the blood-smeared mallet across the workshop, damaging a preliminary carving that had been begun on a slab of ebony. Then he started rummaging again through the Iranian’s toolbox.
“And what do you think of this?”
Fieno nodded.
“And turn off that music, nobody’s going to be doing any more screaming.”
Paja snapped the blades of the pincers shut several times. As if to test their power. He grabbed Abbas’s right hand and continued his work, turning his back on Max and Fieno.
“This guy’s not going to be able to use his hands to even pee anymore.”
They took off their ski masks and left the shop drenched in sweat. Fieno slipped the gat down the back of his pants and pointed his forefinger at Max.
“We’ll settle up with you later.”
Max heard the BMW take off at low speed, and then he took a few steps toward Abbas’s body. He loosened the hemp bonds knotted to the pipes, freed his wrists, and arranged the old man’s arms along his sides.
All this was too much, even for him.
He had chosen the streets at a certain moment. Or maybe the streets had chosen him.
But this wasn’t the streets. It couldn’t be.
He lifted the old man’s head from the floor. Then, slowly, he also raised his torso, leaning him against the wall. He freed him of the rag and duct tape that was gagging his mouth, to prevent him from suffocating in the mucus and blood. And only then did he manage to appreciate the dignity of his features, though they were contracted in pain. That olive complexion crisscrossed by deep creases, the cheeks sunken hollow by hard work and fatigue and highlighted by a fine layer of white whiskers.
He felt pity for that old man. He would never have admitted it, but he felt pity for himself, as well.
He strode quickly out to the street and his motorcycle. Just in time to cross paths with a white Chevrolet Spark that was pulling over toward the lights of the shop, with the security shutter now open. He slowed down, stopping a hundred yards or so down the street, to see who it was.
A young woman. She was talking on the phone. And laughing.
“Look, Alice, I’m going in to see my father right now. Yeah, yeah, he works at night, too. All right, I’ll tell him . . . Of course.”
Max held his breath as he watched her. She possessed a magnetic beauty. A fleshy mouth, the eyes of a doe, and long, shiny black hair that tumbled down her back. A walking dream.
“Okay, Alice, I need to get off now. I’m going into Papa’s shop.”
It was time to go. He accelerated to 55 mph in first gear. In time to avoid seeing her walk into the shop. To keep from hearing the demented screams at the sight of her father’s horror. To reach Via Tuscolana and from there run every red light until he reached the Arco di Travertino, where he came to a halt not far from a couple of trannies who were smoking, crouched on a low wall by the IP self-serve gas station.
“Ciao, dark and handsome!”
“Not today.”
He took off his helmet and leaned the bike over on its kickstand. He rummaged through the pockets of his cotton Belstaff jacket, in search of his dedicated cell phone. The one that called only one person and took calls from one person only.
Samurai answered on the second ring, even though it was one in the morning.
“What’s going on?”
“I have a problem. Or maybe you have one, too. I need to see you.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“All right. On Corso Francia. In twenty minutes.”
Max stuck the cell phone back into the jacket pocket and strode a few steps closer to an Alfa Romeo Giulietta that he had noticed parked with the lights off when he’d first pulled into the gas station.
He knew that car. It belonged to the Carabinieri Marshal Carmine Terenzi. He went over to the driver’s side, just in time to see a stubby, hairy hand with a wedding ring on the third finger grabbing a hooker’s bleached blonde hair. The head was pumping up and down like a mannequin, and the swine was leaning back with his head on the seatback, mouth open, tongue lolling.
Max took one last drag on his Marlboro and stubbed it out on the side of the Alfa. Terenzi shot him a smile through the car window as he came.
Max turned his back on him.
Crooked cop. That’s what the streets had turned into, too.
Samurai, as always, was punctual to the second.
“All right, can you tell me what’s so urgent it calls for you to interrupt my meditation, Max?”
“The Anacletis, Maestro.”
Max told the story in a rush. Samurai listened without the slightest reaction. The young man was upset. Samurai could detect the acrid odor of anger emanating from him. And a saccharine whiff of pity that he didn’t like one bit.
“Go smoke a cigarette,” he ordered, at last. “I need to think. And if you don’t mind, make sure you’re downwind. You know how I detest the smell of tobacco.”
Max stepped a short distance away. Samurai sat watching the nighttime traffic on Corso di Francia. All that electric frenzy churning in the night, that senseless busy to-and-fro of homunculi.
Samurai was fifty-two years old, tall, with close-cropped gray hair. He always dressed with sober elegance, and his favorite color was black. Under his Kiton jackets, he loved to wear stretch T-shirts that showed off an agile and natural musculature. He never snorted coke, he didn’t smoke cigarettes, and only on rare occasions did he indulge in a finger of pure malt whiskey.
Samurai was a slave to nothing and no one.
Samurai allowed himself to be controlled by nothing and no one.
He was the one who controlled everything. He was the boss.
He had grown up surrounded by the myth of a Fascist national revolution; he’d made his bones by beating up reds in high school, then he’d graduated to armed robberies to finance the group, he’d ambitiously dreamed of a coup in Italy, seizing power, exterminating Jews and Communists. One day, he’d watched his best friend be shot full of police lead. He’d managed to survive by some miracle. But the cops tracked him down. An informant had ratted him out. Samurai happened to find out about it through a fellow Fascist who frequented the same gymnasium as certain members of the police SWAT team.
He prepared himself to die with honor.
But the days continued to pass. And no one came looking for him. He thought about turning himself in. The wait was killing him. At last, someone got in touch. An officer of the intelligence services. He offered Samurai a deal. A few dirty little jobs in exchange for protection. Samurai told him to go to hell.
The cops, as was to be expected, came back looking for him. This time, they came in force and large numbers. Armed and pissed off. They were looking for a firefight, a chance to kill him at last. The best outcome for everyone. The obscene pact that had been offered him could be buried with his corpse.
Samurai put up his hands and let himself be handcuffed with a mocking smile.
At his trial he never opened his mouth. He was given five years. In prison he read Pound, Céline, and The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, and exercised regularly to keep from succumbing to the boredom. They took him for a hard guy, an uncompromising political prisoner, and they let him be. He said hello to everyone and was friends with no one. He got a six-month reduction of his sentence by behaving like a model prisoner.
But politics had nothing to do with good conduct. Not anymore, anyway. Samurai was disappointed. Prison had forced him into regular contact with his fellow men. He had seen and recognized human beings for what they really are. There was no hope. Impossible to awaken their benumbed consciences.
It really seemed that the society he wanted to change was dead set against being changed. It really seemed tha
t he had chosen the wrong life.
His meditations culminated in the decision to commit suicide, in the same way the writer Yukio Mishima had done.
He’d act a week before being released from prison. That way the meaning of his extreme act would be quite clear to everyone: disgust for the modern world, revolt against the mediocrity of the masses, contempt for the miserable and the weak. Better a heroic death than to live on as a slave.
A few days before the date he had set, they suddenly transferred him to a different cell. His new cellmate introduced himself as Dandi. He was also about to be released, a big young man with an ironic smile and an affable personality, and he boasted that he had put together the most powerful and invincible gang in Rome. He hadn’t done it all on his own, he made clear, but with “certain friends you really ought to get to know.”
“My time is done, Dandi.”
“Really? But how old are you, excuse me? Twenty-five? And you’re talking like my grandfather?”
“It’s not the age that matters, is what you’re carrying inside you.”
“And just so I understand, why don’t you tell me what you’d be carrying inside you?”
The guy was likeable, and he seemed trustworthy. Samurai decided to trust him. The solitude was slowly killing him. He told Dandi everything. It didn’t take much time. He had just started spouting out a quote from Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World when Dandi interrupted him.
“Okay, now I see. So you’re saying you want to kill yourself because this shitty world doesn’t deserve you.”
Samurai nodded: a crude summary but, he had to admit, an effective one.
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