XLIII
Farideh had her back turned to Max, shielding herself from the wind. She was staring ecstatically at the labyrinth of gleaming white plaster of Hora and the only strip of asphalt on the island of Folegandros. The road vanished inland a few miles to the northwest, toward the 1,300-foot elevation of Agios Eleftherios, in the direction of the village of Ano Meria, the only other inhabited settlement. She turned to look at Max. Then she smiled at him. He stroked her hair. He hadn’t told her about Samurai. After all, what risk could there possibly be? The girl knew nothing about him. And that’s the way he wanted it to stay. She trusted him. She had given herself to him, unconditionally. Nothing about that trip could possibly arouse her suspicions.
“They hired me to bring a boat back from Greece to Fiumicino. It’s good pay. And I want you to come with me, because I don’t want to be alone anymore, or with just Kant to keep me company.”
In the early afternoon, Shalva joined the couple in the hotel, a simple structure on a cliff high above the sea. Max introduced him as Misha, a rich Russian businessman.
“You know, Farideh, this gentleman produces more steel than all of Italy put together, can you believe it?”
“You’re too kind, Max. Steel, at this point, is a thing of the past. And I’m really starting to feel like a man of the past.”
Farideh looked the Georgian in the eyes.
“You strike me as quite young, sir, and in any case, there’s a great beauty in the antiquity of things. I say it as the Persian that I am.”
“Ah, I thought there was something. Something I couldn’t quite pin down. You’re an Aryan, then. That’s where such remarkable beauty comes from. I’ll have to tell our mutual friend, right, Max?”
The reference to Samurai hit Max in the gut like a solid punch.
“Don’t you agree, Max? Do you think our friend won’t understand how lucky you are? I think he will. And if he doesn’t, I can assure you that I’ll make sure he sees the light.”
“Which friend is this?” asked Farideh.
“Just one of Misha’s cousins, my love,” Max improvised. “A cousin I transported a boat for last summer, and who was worried about the fact that I was still single.”
Farideh blushed. They drank a coffee, then another, then a bottle of ouzo appeared. Shalva liked Max. Even more, he liked that magnificent amber woman who was with him. And so he prolonged that olfactory and visual pleasure until he was thoroughly sated and decided that the time had come to say farewell and impart the instructions which were, after all, the reason he was sitting at that table.
With a nod, Shalva took Max aside and handed him a waterproof bag and a bunch of keys.
“You know the Runa very well. It’s down at the Karavostasis wharf. In case we don’t see each other tomorrow morning, have a safe trip. And when you get to Fiumicino, let me know. Ah, and give my regards to Samurai. Tell him that I’m grateful for what he did with regard to the caregivers. Tell him that it’s taken care of.”
Max registered the information.
Shalva appreciated the young man’s discretion. There was no need to get into details. Thanks to the tip that Samurai had procured for him, he’d managed to unmask the traitor. The traffic in caregivers had been momentarily broken off, but the informant had got what was coming to him. According to Georgian protocol: with his heart split open by the ritual blade, and his eyes carved out with two mussel shells kindly provided by Shalva’s partners from Bari.
The two young men came back to the table.
Farideh stood up, kissing Shalva on both cheeks.
“I hope to see you again, Misha: it’s been a pleasure.”
“On my boat, on my boat, all of us together next summer, my Star of the East. Max will work and we’ll lie in the sun. And maybe by then things will be less formal between us, given you don’t think I look all that old. Oh, Max, don’t get jealous now. Ha, ha, ha . . . ”
Toward evening, after making love, Farideh turned her cell phone back on. She’d left it switched off ever since she’d set foot on Folegandros. She wasn’t expecting any urgent calls, and she didn’t have the money to pay for roaming. She just turned it on for a few minutes to check her texts. And just as she was about to push the off button, the thing started vibrating. She looked at the display.
Alice.
“Hello, Alice, ciao.”
Farideh spoke in a whisper, to keep from waking Max up, but all the same she was unable to conceal from her girlfriend how happily and sweetly she had emerged from her sleep. She told her all about Greece, the trip on the Runa, the tenderness she felt for Max, the passion.
Alice’s words made her blood run cold.
“Watch out for that young man. He might not be who you think he is.”
Farideh turned off her phone and plunged back into that dull sense of sadness and melancholy she thought she’d been cured of. The sadness that had gripped ever since the day that, as a little girl, she’d clung to her father, looking at her mother’s dead body, until the day she met Max.
The truth was that she was mad at Alice. Why had she called her, why had she said that? What was wrong with the happiness she was feeling? Is it true then that women don’t know how to be friends in full?
She decided to ward off those bad thoughts and curled up in bed. She pressed her lips against Max’s.
XLIV
Alice ended the conversation wondering whether it had been a good idea to call Farideh. She’d put off that decision for a long time. She finally called because she’d decided she could trust Marco completely. What reason would he have had to lie to her about Max? If Max really was Nicce, then putting Farideh on guard against him was the act of a friend.
Her phone vibrated. It was him. For the tenth time.
“I’m fine, don’t worry. Give me an hour and I’ll be at your place. Of course, I’m fine, I told you, everything’s fine, stop fretting.”
For the whole day, she and Diego, from the young man’s apartment, had monitored the website with a growing sense of excitement. Some anonymous hacker had posted judicial documents that concerned Samurai. They didn’t understand a word of it. It was certainly a signal intended for someone in particular. But who? Anyway, she had done her part. As expected, the website had gone dark after a few hours, but the more than five hundred messages received, variously of horror and solidarity, meant that the rock they’d tossed had made waves in the stagnant waters of the capital. The news had been carried by the online editions of the major news publications. A city councilman, a member of the opposition, had announced a parliamentary inquiry. The regional news hour had interviewed General Rapisarda and the prosecuting magistrate Setola. Setola had been dismissive, alluding confusedly to unproven insinuations. Rapisarda had been more decisive; it was clearly the work of a diabolical provocateur, he’d said. Another confirmation that they’d hit a bullseye. The whole time Diego had buzzed around her, trying to narrow the distance between their bodies. She had rejected him. They’d had an affair, that much was certainly true. But that was water under the bridge by now. As long as Marco was around, the road was closed. One thing she didn’t need was emotional confusion and mess in this period of her life. And after all, Marco’s eagerness to protect her was flattering. Alice hesitated to use the word love. Too soon, and there were too many contradictions, still. And at night, when they finally got dressed, she had made up her mind to have a serious talk with him: he didn’t need to feel guilty, that was out of place. It was clear that once they put it all up on the web, they’d trace it back to her. She’d been a target to start with, ever since she’d first challenged the Anacleti clan. Virtual firewalls might stop investigating magistrates, but they wouldn’t stop people like Samurai. Retaliation could be expected. And she wasn’t a delicate girl he needed to protect, she was a fighter. If you want things to change, you have to be ready to pay the price.
As she was c
limbing the steps of the small seventeenth-century family palazzo on Via del Corallo, she decided that Grandma Sandra’s feelings would be hurt. Usually she stayed the night at her house, accompanying her gently into the troubled sleep of the elderly by reading her a few pages of her beloved D’Annunzio. That night she wouldn’t be able to do anything more than to tuck her in. Too much adrenaline, too many emotions, too much desire.
She used her own keys to open the door, she peeked into the perennially shadowy front hall, and to her great surprise she was greeted by the sound of a burst of raucous laughter mixed with the background of a low, pleasant, courteous male voice.
Her grandma had visitors? But who, other than Alice herself, would spare a thought for her?”
“Grandma? It’s me, Alice. Is there someone there with you?”
“Come in, come in, dear, we were waiting for you . . . ”
She practically ran down the long hallway that led to the drawing room, lit by the Empire-style lamp.
Grandma Sandra was sitting in her beloved red velvet armchair, beneath a large seventeenth-century portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, the legendary poisoner. And sitting across from her, intently sipping a cup of tea, was Samurai.
Alice came to a halt at the doorway and, instinctively, clutched the bag containing her personal computer to her chest.
“Alice, come say hello to your friend. He’s such an exquisite person.”
“You’re too kind, Donna Alessandra,” said Samurai. He got to his feet, with an elegant bow.
“Grandma, let me get you into bed.”
“Alice! I can do it myself.”
“I’ll help you, I said.”
Samurai helped the elderly woman to her feet. She rested her weight on his arm. Samurai turned her over to Alice. For an instant their gazes brushed. Samurai’s eyes were gelid, expressionless. They frightened her.
“He’s such an exquisite person,” Grandma Sandra said again, when they were in her bedroom. “You’ve finally started making the right kind of friends.”
“Grandma, I’m so sorry, but I’m in a little bit of a hurry.”
“Yes, yes, of course, dear. Go on, you go on, and when you leave, remember to lock the door behind you. Alice . . . ”
“Yes, Grandma?”
“Don’t you think your friend looks like Major Hermann?”
Alice sighed. During the German occupation of Rome, in 1944, the little palazzo on Via del Corallo had been requisitioned by the Wehrmacht. Grandma Sandra’s father was fighting on the American side, and the rest of the family was held hostage by the Germans. Major Hermann had personally vouched that they would be safe. Grandma Sandra treasured that memory with a veneration that verged on hero-worship. Major Hermann was her standard by which all masculine charm and allure was gauged. Alice suspected that between the distinguished, swastika-wearing officer and the young heiress of the house of Savelli there might have been something more than mutual respect.
“Major Hermann has been dead for fifty years,” she said brusquely.
“When you set yourself to it, you can be quite a grouch,” the old woman replied, indignantly.
Samurai was sitting contemplating the portrait of Lucrezia Borgia.
“Your grandmother told me that at night Lucrezia breaks free of the canvas and comes to life. She told me that, in her opinion, Lucrezia was defamed. She was no murderer. In any case, I made the tea with my own two hands . . . For that matter, libel is a powerful weapon, and that’s something you should know all about, right, Alice?”
“What do you want with me?”
“I want you to sit down and get comfortable and give me five minutes of your precious time. I won’t ask anything more.”
“Should I trust you?”
“You’re free to leave. You could have done it the minute you walked in the room.”
“And leave you here with Grandma Sandra? I’d never have done that.”
“I understand. But do you really think that someone like me would really try to hurt a little old lady? You underestimate me, no doubt about it. If I had wanted to do such a thing, I’d have had all the time, in the last two hours I just spent here. And I have to say, two extremely agreeable hours. Donna Alessandra is a true lady, let me say it. In bygone times, people like her would have captured the hearts of warriors far nobler than I.”
“So you consider yourself a warrior, is that it?”
Samurai poured himself some tea and offered her some. Alice declined. But, at last, she sat down on a Thonet chair, a few steps away from him.
“In this question of yours I recognize the Alice who made my old friend Marco go head over heels.”
“Marco is no friend of yours!” she reacted.
“He was once. And certain things matter. They are subtle bonds that are established between people of real worth, bonds that condition them for the rest of their lives. Even beyond their own intentions . . . but we can talk more about that later. Do you know why you didn’t run screaming, why you didn’t call 911, why you didn’t try to attack me, Alice? No? Then let me explain. It’s because you are a person with a certain amount of curiosity. You want to know. You want to build up your store of knowledge. And in this eagerness, you let yourself be led by the hand by the wrong people, and you leapt to mistaken conclusions. And this, for a banner-bearer of the generation of exactitude like yourself, is unforgivable. No, don’t interrupt me. The five minutes isn’t up yet, be fair. You and Marco fool yourselves into thinking that you can stop history. But the Great Project is history, and it’s going to move forward, whether or not the two of you want it to.”
“Is that a threat?” she smiled, sarcastically.
“It’s a statement of fact. That’s all.” Samurai adjusted the creases in his black trousers. “Does the word Bagatto mean anything to you?”
“It’s a tarot card. The Magician, or the Mountebank.”
“Of course. The active principle, the spirit that starts the Great Game. But try going online and searching for ‘Il Bagatto social center.’ You can ask Marco to explain the rest to you. In fact, since we have this opportunity, do me one last favor. Call him on your phone. And let me speak to him.”
Alice obeyed, cowed by him. She dialed the number and, when he answered, handed the phone over to Samurai.
“Ciao, Marco. I just wanted to compliment you. Your new girlfriend is really something special.”
Then he handed the iPhone back to her and took his leave, mocking and perfectly corteous.
Half an hour later, Marco was on Via del Corallo.
“You can put away the arsenal, he’s left. And don’t make any noise: Grandma Sandra is a light sleeper,” Alice said.
When he tried to embrace her, she pushed him away.
“You’re right. I’m an idiot. I fed you to the wolves. I’ll never be able to forgive myself. Now let me get you away from here.”
“Marco, what’s Il Bagatto?”
Marco let himself flop down into an armchair. He took his head in his hands. And he told her everything. Everything he had kept from her till now. His father, a railroad employee, a longtime Communist. His blind faith in the Party hierarchy, from the secretary and comrade in chief, all the way down to the lowliest bureaucrat who claimed the right to shout orders at the mild-mannered multitude of the Party faithful. Marco had hated all that. His hatred had thrust him into Samurai’s arms. He had believed in that man. And then he’d come dangerously close to killing him. And Samurai, for his part, had spared his life. He spoke of his mother’s kindness, of his father’s consternation upon learning that Marco had passed the admission exam and would be attending the police academy: what was worse, a son who was a Fascist or one who was a Carabiniere? In the end, they had made peace. But he had vanished from his life leaving too many things unsaid, too many hugs refused, too many tears choked back.
“Now you k
now it all.”
“Now it’s too late. You should have made up your mind before this.”
“I would have. It was just that . . . all right, I have no excuse. Forgive me.”
“For a while, we’d better not see each other, Marco.”
XLV
From EUR they had set out, thought Samurai as he stared at Il Fungo, and it was to EUR that they were returning.
And in the middle lay an entire lifetime.
They’d been punk kids taught to revere the act, nourished on its mystique; they’d been brought up on the cult of the race, raised to hate the present. They dreamed of a heroic past, they yearned for superman’s triumph, and in the meantime they gathered in the shade of Il Fungo to plan their next action.
They had dictated law at EUR. What better hunting ground than that quarter of Rome made up of sharp-edged geometries and spatial layouts that rejected all curves, reminiscent of the Fascist utopia that shipwrecked on the shoals of betrayal? They had fooled themselves, the others, the reds, the powerful ones, their longtime enemies, that they had herded them onto some sort of Indian reservation. They had proved with blood that for people like them there was no such thing as a reservation. They had set out from EUR to conquer the city. And now they were returning to EUR.
For a new departure? For the final surrender?
Samurai was in the grip of conflicting emotions. If he reasoned about it coldly, he could only conclude that the situation was falling apart. Defeat was in the air. The governing coalition was heading for a crackup. They were just waiting for the official death certificate at this point. The whole thing with the blog only complicated matters. They had taken emergency measures, but the damage was done. Getting the measure approved was going to be a race against time. The horses were panting, winded. Or maybe it was more a case of the trainers and jockeys having overdone it with the drugs, and now the animals were on their last legs, their internal organs ravaged by the chemical abuse. Malgradi was losing ground. In the circles that mattered, there was already talk of succession. The success of the initiative was, at this point, in the hands of the gods. Samurai had tried to bring the forces out on the street back under some kind of control. He wasn’t yet ready to admit defeat, but it was just a matter of time now.
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