We'll Sleep When We're Old

by Pino Corrias

  “Andrea Serrano is a good guy.”

  “A peaceful good guy, or a violent good guy?”

  “No, Andrea would never hurt her. Absolutely not.”

  “Do you know that or are you presuming?”

  “I know it, full stop. Andrea is one of the very few genuine friends that I have in this magnificent city of con men and frauds. He has a heart in his chest and a head on his shoulders, if you know what I mean. He loves women. He has only two shortcomings: he doesn’t know how to cook anything edible until after midnight, and he has no practical common sense about life. But as far as both those defects are concerned, he has me, and I cook him the best fish soup anybody in Rome knows how to make. And I tidy up his accounts for him. That’s why he works for me.”

  “Are you such good friends that he can take your car without even so much as a phone call to say thanks, much less tell you where he’s going?”

  “His exit from Milly’s party with Jacaranda was impressive, rapid, and surprising. A true coup de théâtre.”

  “But he left you marooned in Sabaudia, didn’t he?”

  Oscar lowers his tone of voice and speaks confidentially: “He asked me if he could take the Jaguar in advance, and I told him he could, of course. Except then I told everyone that he just stole it from me, because that made a more entertaining story. And if a story is more entertaining, it travels faster and farther. I needed that story to get to the papers in a hurry.”

  “For the premiere of the film.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  Oscar throws his arms wide. “The two sweethearts are happy. The producer is happy. And tickets are selling like hotcakes.”

  Ventura forces his neck back hard against the back of the chair. “Now would you also care to tell me where they’ve gone so we can put an end to all this playacting?”

  At That Moment, Helga Shows Up

  At that moment, Helga shows up in the living room. Breathtakingly beautiful. Raven haired, dark eyed, dark skinned, red lipped, with a statuesque physique, but light as air on her stiletto heels. She’s wearing a black skirt suit, a pink silk blouse, a string of pearls, a diamond ring worth a hundred and fifty monthly paychecks, and the scent of a citrus orchard in full bloom. She looks not Argentine, but Persian. A Persian princess out of the Thousand and One Nights, with a voice just a hint rougher than velvet.

  “You’re a police commissario, aren’t you?” she asks him, as if being one must be the nicest and most enviable thing on earth.

  Ventura is simultaneously tempted to, first, get to his feet and kiss her hand and, second, just sit there, gazing at her.

  She gives him a smile that will warm up the rest of his day. Then she turns to look at Oscar, dropping the temperature of her gaze until his teeth are chattering in the midst of a tiny blizzard. “Oscar, have you offered the commissario anything?” But she doesn’t bother to wait for the answer. She calls her personal maid, Miriaaam! She orders mineral water, espresso, and fresh-squeezed orange juice “for the gentleman.” She adjusts her pink gold Mont Blanc wristwatch. She takes a few steps, showing off the lithe elasticity of a runway fashion model and the perfidious wiles of a wife in the throes of hatred. “I hope it’s nothing serious, Commissario. My husband is always so attentive to everything I do that he often forgets to tell me what he gets up to.” Having conveyed the alibi that makes all further questioning entirely unnecessary, she adjusts the bias-cut bangs that dance over her eyes and then issues her irrevocable decision: “I’m going.”

  This time, Ventura does stand up and brushes her hand, bowing to her loveliness and her bravura performance. “Signora.”

  “I hope you’ll excuse me, Commissario. Such a pleasure to meet you,” she tells him, gazing at him as if he were the most warmly anticipated guest of the week. She then disappears in more or less the same way she appeared in the first place, with a trippingly light dance step, merging her soft curves into the shadows of the doorway that leads through the sand-colored wall, between the large flowers by Andy Warhol and a red slash by Fontana.

  “Are you interested in art?” Oscar Martello asks him, curiously, when Ventura, in an attempt to cover up his turmoil at the sight of Helga, simulates a corresponding excitement for the two paintings.

  “No, I wish I knew more. But those paintings are so famous that even I recognize them.”

  “You were saying?”

  “That I’d certainly like to know where those two characters of yours have gotten to. And why Serrano too has turned his phone off.”

  Oscar looks at him, calculating the risk of trying to palm off another fairy tale on him, but he doesn’t want to say too much to this guy who’s sitting in the middle of his home and has just screwed his wife with his eyes.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. Maybe they’re on a beach. Or high up in the mountains. Whatever the case, I’m guessing, in bed somewhere, ha ha!”

  Ventura doesn’t smile.

  Ventura plays the tough guy.

  And that’s when Oscar shifts gears. “As for the Mafia, the Mafiosi, I don’t know how they’re going to take this film, which is a full-frontal attack, a level denunciation, and allow me to say it: very courageous.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a film in defense of civil society. I’d like to invite you to a screening. Let’s say the advance screening for the press, the day after tomorrow, in the evening. And Thursday, fingers crossed, it’s opening wide in four hundred theaters. Your boss is coming too.”

  “My boss?”

  “The chief of police. Alberto is an old friend. I spoke with him yesterday. And do you know what he told me? That they’re keeping their best eyes on the safety of this film.”

  “Is that what he said?” Ventura wants to see how far he’s willing to push it.

  “Well, now that I’ve met you, I can’t imagine he was referring to anyone else, what do you say?”

  “What can I say? I’m flattered.”

  Oscar gives him a look and a smile, as if he too has found the man irresistible. “Have you ever thought about going into the movies? I mean it: writing stories for film and television. Or even just telling those stories to one of my writers. I imagine you must have seen some incredible things in such a long career. If you ever feel like it, just whistle, we could—”

  Ventura starts showing signs of impatience. He’s had enough. “Drop it. You were doing better before.”

  “What do you mean before?”

  “Before your wife came in and scolded you for not offering me anything.”

  Oscar takes the point, stiffens, rolls the cigar around between his teeth, and blows out a plume of smoke.

  Miriam, the Somali housemaid, shows up with espresso, croissants, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and mineral water. But neither of them seems to notice. They continue looking at each other, until finally Oscar gives in. “I hope I haven’t offended you, I certainly didn’t mean to.”

  Ventura decides that the time has come. “You don’t think by any chance that they’ve gone to Paris to stay in your new apartment?”

  Oscar meets and holds his gaze, and then smiles. “You know things even when you pretend you don’t know them, don’t you? Ha ha! But this time you’re wrong. I don’t know where you got your information, but if you’re referring to a certain apartment in the Montparnasse district, that’s the new headquarters of a nonprofit called—”

  “Food against the Storm?”

  “No, that’s the Italian-English nonprofit. The French nonprofit is called Une Baguette pour l’Afrique. A rather picturesque name, don’t you think? But who cares about the name if they do their job well. Are we agreed?”

  “So the apartment doesn’t belong to you.”

  “I put in a little money, as I presume you know. But the majority ownership belongs to Angelina Casagrande’s nonprofit. My part is mere charity.”

  “Laudable.”

  “If a person has been given so much by soc
iety, then it’s only right for him to give back, don’t you think? And if that gratitude also happens to be good for a tax deduction, so much the better, ha ha!”

  “So they’re not there.”

  “Is it really all that important? I can reach out to Angelina and find out, and I’ll get back to you, if you really care so much.”

  Ventura gestures as if to say, fine, just skip it. But he doesn’t stand up. “As long as we’re at it, let me bend your ear for another couple of minutes: What can you tell me about Attilio Fabris?”

  Oscar thinks it over, relaxes. “A visionary director. A first-rate professional. His movie will prove it. Wait and see.”

  “Would he be capable of hurting another person?”

  “Ah, you just won’t let it rest. You continue to think that Jacaranda Rizzi is in danger, even though I’ve told you that there’s no problem.”

  “I like to know how many characters are onstage.”

  “You’re just like me. A perfectionist, congratulations. In any case, no. Fabris wouldn’t hurt a fly. And if he were going to hurt anyone at all, he’d probably choose to hurt the producer, ha ha! I know what you’re thinking about. That half-baked movie about violence, right?”

  “Yes. It was kind of powerful.”

  “I know. But believe me: directors dream up things, they see worlds with the eyes of their imaginations and try to re-create them. In the old days, with plasterboard, nowadays with CGI. For anything else, they’re useless. To make their damned movies they need a hundred people, on my payroll; I don’t know if I convey the point. On their own, they wouldn’t even know how to plant a tomato plant in a vase. Literally.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you’re not going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what?”

  Oscar’s eyes light up with delight. “Whether I would be capable of hurting another person.”

  “No. I don’t need to ask you that.” He says it with a serious expression. But to Oscar, that answer left intentionally hovering in midair is an irresistible treat, and he bursts out laughing, ha ha! Just then, his cell phone rings. He checks the display, and apologizes, “It’s my office, just give me a minute, please.”

  But it’s not the office. It’s his law firm. They inform him that Attilio Fabris’s agent is about to file a lawsuit for threats, battery, and mental cruelty.

  From a distance, Oscar looks at the back of Ventura’s head and evaluates this strange coincidence. Evidently everyone’s looking into that fart in outer space, Fabris. He’ll eventually have to deal with him, too, but for now, lowering his voice, he says, “Tell him that if he dares I’ll break both his legs, by stomping on them with both feet, and then I’ll break the casts when he gets them.”

  The lawyer on the other end of the line hesitates. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “No? I find it’s phenomenal.”

  “If I may—”

  He interrupts, “I’m afraid you can’t. And tell him that I’m his wolf. He’ll understand.”

  Fabris’s Wolves

  Oscar Martello remembers very clearly the first day he met Attilio Fabris, three years ago, in the offices of Anvil Film: the director had just turned thirty, and he had the face of a rich, spoiled child. A handlebar mustache to give himself a presence, but with a fairly ridiculous overall effect. Dressed in total black. The demeanor of a wily fox who pretends to be introverted so he’ll seem more intelligent. He emanated a high-handed arrogance that he clearly struggled to suppress, probably an inheritance from his father, Pierferdinando Fabris, chief physician in the cardiology ward at Varese Hospital, a man in favor of law and order, and in fact, a monarchist, which was a category of assholes that Oscar believed had gone extinct. As for his mother, she was one of those usual noblewomen, thin as a straw, afflicted with nervous disorders, the ones they still cultivate along the dreary lakeshores, like certain competition roses, and who generally wither and decline until they rot away in small vases filled to the brim with martinis.

  In the way of loathing his mother and father that Attilio had, without quarter, Oscar recognized his own. And it was the first thing that aroused his curiosity. That was why he had him tell the whole saga of his travels and his turmoils.

  Attilio had gotten the hell out of Varese, and wound up in London. And since he didn’t know how to do anything, he decided to become an artist and enroll in film school. That was the first sound thing the young man had done—after previously smoking sufficient quantities of Afghan hash oil, he had experienced the infinite expansion of time itself. And that was his second good hunch, the basis for a short film in which he shot the four-second arc of his own ejaculation, and extracted two minutes and forty seconds of slow motion, with a hypnotic soundtrack of electronic music not unlike the old Pink Floyd. The title was practically longer than the film itself—The Curvature of Space-Time According to Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as Applied to the Flight of My Bird—and opened many doors for him, stimulating the curiosity of the film critics, giving him access to two dozen film festivals around the world, and to a considerable number of young female film enthusiasts who wanted to experience the thrill of getting their faces splashed by the star of Attilio Fabris’s new opus.

  If anything, his first feature-length movie prompted even more excitement. It was titled Wolves. It was the story of three young men with tough-guy expressions on their faces, studded leather jackets, and tattoos, who carry out a home invasion in a superdeluxe villa in the Lombard countryside, the home of a married couple in their fifties, a husband and wife, salt-and-pepper hair, slim, trim, and athletic, who for the first ten minutes of the movie do their best to talk the young thugs into sparing them any violence. But when the intruders snap out their switchblades, instead of dissolving in fear, the older couple whips out two 9 mm Glock pistols, shoots one of their assailants in the head, and then wraps up the other two wiseguys on two chairs, tying them back to back. Then they don leather bondage outfits, bring out whips, pliers, electric wires, and set to work on them, taking their time, forcing them to tell the whole story of their stupid lives, between one scream and the next. Then they make them watch as they engage in spectacularly theatrical sex, and right at the dizzying crescendo, they slash both the home invaders’ throats. They cut them up into pieces. They toss them into the walk-in freezer, already stacked high with other human remains. And at last they emerge into the garden, stark naked, smeared with blood, to howl at the moon.

  The sheer brutal eccentricity of the story had its filthy effect. A couple of critics wrote that Attilio Fabris, “by turning the old and savory masterpiece Clockwork Orange on its head,” had illuminated “the unexpected violence that lies in ambush in the kitchen of everyday life, a metaphor for the insecurity of this globalized world that keeps pushing us backward in time, back to primeval tribal violence.” Someone mentioned a chilly masterpiece. Someone else spoke of a boiling-hot gothic.

  Fabris went to the first TV interview completely whacked out on methamphetamine. And since he wanted to exaggerate in order to astonish the interviewer, a woman who was panting like a Great Dane, he told her that for the two main characters of Wolves he’d taken his inspiration in general “from the criminal bourgeoisie of Northern Italy” and, in particular, “from Mama and Papa.”

  Complete pandemonium ensued. His family and the city of Varese declared him an outcast. His mother wound up in the hospital, under sedation. His father threatened him, waving a scalpel under his nose. He just laughed and egged them on, the way a young, show-offy toreador might do, he was so completely immune to their threats: his grandfather had been good enough to leave him a fortune of 15 million Swiss francs in his will, before putting a bullet through his head in the vault in his villa in Lugano.

  At the height of the quarrel, a couple of squad cars pulled up to soothe tensions within the Fabris family. The young man emerged streaming trails of glory. And the next day, at seven in the morning, for the first time in his life, he received a
phone call from Oscar Martello, who introduced himself, crying, “I’m your new producer!” And even though it was the break of day, he assailed him, already pumped up with adrenaline: “What are you doing, Attilio, sleeping? Are you goofing off?”

  Oscar puts an end to the flashback, and returns to staring at Raul Ventura—who in the meantime has been gazing raptly at the famous Manzoni monochrome, a square of wrinkled white canvas, tending ever so slightly to gray, in turn set in a larger square of wall painted a soft black to make the painting the center of the immense living room.

  “Is this it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is this the Manzoni that you purchased from the Fabris family?”

  Before Oscar’s face splits into a beaming smile, a shadow passes over it. “Yes, sure it is. And how did you happen to know that?”

  “I’ve heard about it.”

  Oscar relaxes. “I bet you did. It’s a fantastic artwork. And he, too, well, he was a fabulous individual, Piero Manzoni, the artist. They don’t make artists like him anymore.”

  “Really? I read somewhere that he was a miserable alcoholic who died young.”

  “Poor, but from a wealthy family, a family of counts or something like that. Alcoholic, no question. A solitary revolutionary, the way I like them.”

  “Solitary revolutionaries usually come to unhappy ends.”

  “Exactly. Especially if they fail to find themselves an Oscar Martello who recognizes their genius, harnesses it, exploits it, and pays them. I don’t know if you take the point.”

  Ventura takes the point perfectly; it’s all right there in the dossier dedicated to Oscar Martello that he studied with painstaking care, including the transaction in undeclared funds that were used for the purchase of the painting, outside Italian national territory, presumably in cash. Cash that reverberates in many of the legends told in the drawing rooms of La Dolce Roma, where it is generally estimated that the much-despised Oscar Martello spent a fabulous sum, roughly €1.5 million, perhaps even €2 million. A juicy detail. But still, nothing compared with the priceless revelation offered up by Massimiliano Urso, the art critic, who diagnosed it to be a counterfeit, transforming that fake treasure into a delectable sting.