“You’re a beauty,” Nicolas told her, increasing the pressure of his fingertips on her back. The harder he pushed, the stiffer her back became, in a sensual exchange of pressure and the release of tension.
Skunk’s first dogfight was scheduled for the following night. Right up to the very last minute, Nicolas had been uncertain whether to confirm her presence; after all, Skunk had never faced off with another dog, she could get badly hurt, she could even be killed. But she was ready: his dog couldn’t be one of the world’s losers, she was certainly a world-beater. She’d kick their asses, all of them, he decided as he filled her bowl, she was going to be a champion.
* * *
The fight was scheduled to take place in Marcianise. The dogfight ring had been set up in a pit, six feet square, that years ago had been readied as a resting place for tons of garbage, but had never been used. It was one of those places that seem to exist only if you believe in them, like Hogwarts, and only when you become the owner of a fighting dog.
Nicolas arrived as the sun was setting, and the headlights of the cars and motorcycles parked facing the pit all started flicking on. He parked off to one side and, with Skunk on the leash, he headed over to that hole in the earth. Smooth walls, sheer, impossible to scale, so much so that the trainers of the fighting dogs had to climb down and up on a ladder, like painters. And every time they went down there, the mockery started to rain down from the audience up above—“Go on, give him a bite!”—after which the trainers could climb up out of the pit and the real battle would begin.
Anyone could be hiding among the ordinary spectators and the dog owners, from retirees who spent their days at home or at church but who had a private lust to see limb ripped from limb, all the way up to a rival gang member, an enemy of Nicolas. Atop the rampart that years ago had been a wheat field, the people were all equal, all the same, and all of them had their heads turned down toward that hole in the dirt. Any other place in the city, ’o Gialluto and Nicolas would have drawn guns and started shooting the minute they saw each other, even if it was a chance encounter in the aisle of a supermarket. But here, ’o Gialluto was no longer a Faella, no longer Micione’s brother, he was just the owner of a fighting dog. With one hand on Skunk’s powerful neck, Nicolas waited for ’o Gialluto to arrive, and while he waited he watched the first dogfight.
Facing off were a rottweiler and a Dogo Argentino, but a bigger one than Skunk, certainly a male. The two animals wasted no time studying each other, they just lunged into the fray. All around Nicolas, people started shouting and cheering them on: the rottweiler was more aggressive, he’d make hamburger out of the Dogo, no, the Dogo was just parrying his opponent, don’t you see how it’s staying on its back paws? Kill him. Accìrelo. Rip him limb from limb. Staccace ’a faccia. Take his face off. Rip his throat open. Tear his ear off. Nicolas felt as if he were sitting in the front row of an ancient Roman amphitheater, singing the praises of the gladiators in exchange for sweat, blood, and dirt.
Then the rottweiler and the Dogo slammed together, jaws wide open, the first vertical, the other horizontal, forming a violent cross. Nicolas prepared to hear an explosion of shattered fangs and torn fleshy tissues; instead what he heard was a loud clack, as if gearings had meshed and then ground to a halt.
The trainers descended into the pit, warily circling the two animals locked together, searching for the best point of access, and then lunged at the beasts, lifting their rear legs into the air. The dogs instinctively broke apart, and then resumed the fight. The furious combat didn’t last long, only until the two challengers stopped sinking their teeth into each other, exhausted like a pair of gladiators who had decided to spare each other, to spare themselves. No winner. Jeers and whistles from the disappointed audience.
The next bout was announced by the chattering of the spectators.
Scar tissue from the most recent wounds glittered in the headlights: these were a pair of veterans, the two dogs in the ring, even Nicolas understood that. They stood at the corners of the pit for a good solid five minutes, indifferent to the shouts of the onlookers. But when they lunged together at the center of the ring, the fight didn’t last long: the cane corso went for the bull terrier’s throat, and the dog hesitated an instant too long, unsure whether to dodge the attack or attack in response, and in a second he was on his back. The cane corso went for him, getting in a couple of solid bites, but by doing so he exposed his throat, and the bull terrier took that as an opportunity to rip out the other dog’s jugular.
The night went on like that, an assortment of bouts, bets, and lacerated flesh.
Nicolas watched the remaining dogs, and was starting to feel anxious, and that anxiety quickly infected the dog. He didn’t see ’o Gialluto. It was the audience that announced his arrival. Everyone started shouting: “Totò! Totò! Totò!”’O Gialluto’s dog, the Belgian shepherd that was going to face off with Skunk, had finally arrived. Their turn had come.
Nicolas caught a distant glimpse of ’o Gialluto’s jaundiced skin, which seemed to glow a phosphorescent yellow. Neither of the two spoke a word, they had eyes only for the dogs they were taking down into the pit. As soon as her paws hit the dirt floor, Skunk started to snarl, tensing every muscle in her body, the nape of her neck, the neck itself, thighs, hocks, her whole white coat swollen with fibrous protuberances.
Skunk lunged at Totò, who elegantly sidestepped her, dodging each attack, ensuring that the Dogo slammed against the walls of the pit. Nicolas followed each move, teeth on edge, and every time Skunk slammed into the wall his hands went to his head, fingers yanking his hair till it hurt, but each time she immediately charged back into the fray, nothing daunted. On her fifth charge, however, while the Belgian shepherd dodged left, Skunk skidded to a halt and whipped around in a new direction. The two dogs locked in a whirling melee of limbs and fangs, kicking up a cloud of dust into which, for a few seconds, they both vanished from Nicolas’s sight. When the cloud subsided, Skunk was panting and looking up at her master, tongue lolling. Nicolas took a step closer to get a better look; that chunk of flesh dangling from Skunk’s lips couldn’t be hers, it was too rubbery. Then his gaze shifted to Totò, writhing on the ground and spitting out gobbets of blood. Skunk had ripped his tongue out.
“Skunk!” Nicolas waved his arms up and down, as if trying to incite the mob. “Skunk! Skunk!” But the dog stood impassive. Whereupon Nicolas simply flung himself into the pit without bothering to use the ladder, and rolled on the ground, arms wrapped around his championess.
WAKE
“I’m sick and tired of everything.”
“That’s the way things go.”
“Even Nicolas. I’m sick and tired of him, too,” Drone went on.
“Good things and the things we do badly, well, we just have to do them and not ask why. Once you’ve decided to live this life, that’s the way it is. Today we’re here, tomorrow we’re gone. That’s the way it is, it’s not up to us.”
“And who decides it?”
“Who decides it … who decides it…” Drago’ stuck both hands in his pockets. “Uh, no one. Things decide for themselves.”
He lengthened his stride; he was running late for Biscottino’s wake.
Greta’s voice could already be heard, loud and powerful, dozens of yards from the basso. She didn’t sound like a woman annihilated by her loss, as Drone and Drago’ had imagined her; instead it sounded as if she were delivering a courtroom summation. If anything, she looked and sounded like one of those preachers you see in American movies.
Drago’ took a deep breath, screwed up his courage, and entered the basso, dragging Drone behind him—Drone who had changed his mind now and couldn’t bring himself to go in. This had been a friend of theirs. Nicolas had killed him, and by doing so, he’d killed the paranza. You can’t look a woman in the face who’s just lost her son, especially not if she’s lost him the way Greta had lost Biscottino.
“So don’t look her in the face,” Drago’ had replied, but there
was nothing brash about the way he said it. Just the determination to fortify his courage and choke back the tears that had been stinging his cheeks before Drone could get a look at him. He didn’t know whether or not Biscottino really had become a traitor, a Higuain, but one thing was certain, he’d been a friend of theirs, a member of the group.
Inside the apartment, the coffin looked white in the dim light: it had already been welded shut. Inside it were Biscottino’s charred remains; they couldn’t even have an open casket for one last farewell caress. Greta kept a hand on it, almost as if it were a lifesaver that prevented her from slipping under the water, and in the meantime she spoke to the women of the neighborhood, mothers like her.
“Being men, being boys, is a terrible thing. This is the fate that awaits males. First my husband, and now Eduardo. This country is cursed, and so is this government, and if they want to know the truth, they have to get it from an eleven-year-old child. They couldn’t find the truth on their own!”
More women kept arriving, hugging her, then coddling the twins, dressed in mourning but not yet aware that their brother would never be coming home; they stood there, hand in hand, in a corner of the room. Then the women set down the dishes they had cooked for the wake and, with rosaries in their hands, nodded at her words. Drago’ screwed up the nerve to get in line behind the women.
“My condolences, signo’,” he began, when he finally reached her. “We came to let you know that you can keep the mortgage.”
Greta looked at him, expressionless; she’d frozen to the spot and that chill made the hairs stand up on Drago’s forearms. He’d never seen a face like hers, or actually, yes, she looked like Uma Thurman, all she was missing was that yellow jumpsuit. She pointed her forefinger right at him as if it were a gat, and then, in that preacher’s voice, she bellowed: “You! You killed him! You’re all beasts, all wild animals!” She advanced on him threateningly and for an instant Drago’ feared that that forefinger might actually be capable of firing lead. “And like wild animals you ought to die, murdered, alone, in pain, betrayed by your friends the way you betrayed your friend. Because Eduardo, because Eduardo, because Biscottino, as you always called him, loved you all.” And she reached out that hand to claw at him.
But at those words, Drago’ had already taken two steps back, and now he turned on his heels and ran, legs trembling, with Drone ahead of him, running even faster.
The next day, Drago’ passed by the basso once again. He didn’t know why his feet had taken him there; he had fooled himself perhaps into thinking that he might be able to say something else to Biscottino’s mother about the mortgage, but what he was looking for, if not forgiveness, was a little benevolence. All he found was a green sign stuck to the door and the phone number of a real estate agency. Greta had left the city.
HERE WE ARE, HERE WE STAY
The only thing they knew about the journalist who was going to be interviewing them was that she was a woman and that she worked for a local news program.
“What do you think she’ll be like? Hot, do you think?” asked Briato’.
“Hell, these women on TV, you never know if you’re looking at the front of them or the back, they’re so damn skinny,” said Pesce Moscio in disgust, and as usual the response was a wave of mockery about the fat girls that he always seemed to pick. After the fire, they’d seen one another again at the New Maharaja or in the alleys, but never all together. Nicolas knew that this was finally the right occasion to bring the paranza back together: for the first time, they’d tell the world that they existed, they’d make their voices heard. And one way or another, they’d honor Biscottino’s memory. But they needed to remain focused, measure their words. “We need to speak without saying.” The clubhouse would serve as the set for the interview, and, for the occasion, they’d had the foosball tables and the slot machines moved. Even the poster of Stoya had been carefully folded up and stowed safely. Nothing but white, anonymous walls to make the place unrecognizable. And to make themselves unrecognizable, too, Drone had procured a set of Mephisto ski masks.
“Ua’, that’s too cool,” said Tucano, snapping a selfie, and then he turned to Lollipop: “You’re still a dickhead, it’s not like if you cover up a dick you can’t tell it’s still a dick.”
“Guagliu’, I want to go on TV, too,” said ’o White, but Nicolas shook his head no. “Maraja,” he insisted, “now we’re just one paranza, I have the right.” Whereupon Nicolas practically spat in his face that this was an old story, and they, the Children, were the ones to put it to rest. “It’s our fucking problem, ’o White,” he said, and ’o White swallowed his pride and gave up his claim, rather than blow up the confederation over an appearance on TV.
When Risvoltino saw the journalist arrive with a cameraman following behind, he launched a signal to Nicolas: the paranza, in its entirety, lined up against the wall, faces covered with black ski masks that left only eyes and mouth visible, Maraja at the center, and Drago’ and Lollipop, the two tallest, on either end. In front of the wall’s flaking plaster, the row of masked youngsters might just as easily have been seen on the outskirts of any of the world’s big cities. That was the first thought that occurred to the woman as she entered the room and found them waiting, and if she was surprised or frightened, she certainly gave no sign. She extended her hand toward the masked figure who was staring at her with a magnetic gaze, a pair of dark eyes that would pierce the television screen exactly as desired. Excellent, she decided. While her cameraman set up the tripod, she explained how she planned to conduct the interview. “Feel free to talk, and to use curse words now and then, if you like. The more at ease you seem, the better. I understand your situation, for real, I’ve been working on this topic for a long time, and this is finally an opportunity to shed a little light on the blighted outskirts of our country’s cities…”
“Signuri’,” Drago’ interrupted her, “actually, we’re here in the center of the city.”
“Yes, of course, but it’s your social setting that marginalizes you, casts you aside…”
“Like fuck, signuri’,” said Nicolas, his eyes turning flinty. “Forcella is our home, and we’re the ones who give the orders here.”
The journalist instinctively took a step backward. Her body had sensed the danger even before she realized what was happening, a few seconds later, that these weren’t the usual “disadvantaged youth” that she was accustomed to interviewing. She recomposed her face into a steady, professional smile, but maintained the distance she had established, then turned to her cameraman and told him that the interview could begin.
“Are you the boss here?” she asked Nicolas.
“Yes,” Nicolas promptly replied. He was about to add something, but then his gaze buried itself deep in the black rectangle of the video camera, and it dawned on him that that answer hadn’t been right. “No,” he tried to correct himself, “siamo brò, we’re brothers. No one’s superior to anyone else here…” And here he took a pause to search for the right word. “This is a democracy.”
The journalist nodded and extended the microphone under the nose of another ski mask.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I’m already grown up,” Tucano replied.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And what do you do for a living?”
“We’re businessmen,” Briato’ replied.
“Ah, and what kind of business are you involved in, specifically?”
“Things…”
“Could I ask you to be just a bit more detailed?”
“Logistics and large-scale distribution,” came Drone’s voice, promptly.
“What do you all want to do when you grow up?”
“What we’re doing now,” Drone replied again.
“And when you’re older?”
“I don’t want to get old,” said Lollipop. “That’s gross!”
The journalist sat there nonplussed for a few seconds, then
used that answer to plunge to the heart of the interview: “So you’re not afraid of the violence on these streets?”
“We’re not afraid of anything,” Lollipop confirmed, and all those ski-masked heads nodded in unison. “Adda murì mammà.” Pesce Moscio put the seal of approval on it.
“I understand…” she said, and turned to look at the cameraman. Only a quarter turn. That was the signal for him to tighten the frame; she was about to ask the key question.
“Do you deal narcotics?”
Smiles and eyes turning in all directions. One of them said something incomprehensible and the smiles turned into a collective burst of laughter.
“We aren’t dirt farmers,” Nicolas said after a short pause, pulling the reins back into his own hands. “Signori’, we don’t have jobs. If there had been any jobs for us…”
“True,” said Drago’, “they’ve abandoned us…”
“Everyone’s moving out of the center…”
“Weapons. Do you have any weapons on you?” the journalist asked, ignoring their round of complaints.
“Signori’, these are things we don’t talk about…”
“Do you consider yourselves vicious?”
“Not vicious, we just take what we want.”
“And do you take these things that you want illegally, at times?”
“Dottore’,” said Nicolas, “legal, illegal … I mean, come on, it’s as old as the Cippus of Forcella. Legal is if you can afford it, and illegal is if you can’t. You’re illegal until you can pay to make it legal.”
The whole crew burst out laughing and cried, “Wow, that’s huge, brother!”
“The drive-bys, the firefights, the murders,” the journalist went on. “We read all about it in the newspapers, and they say that this neighborhood has turned into a war zone. What do you think?”
“Eh, those are things that happen…”
“So does that mean that you’re responsible for all the murders that take place in Naples?”
Savage Kiss Page 28