The Past is a Foreign Country Page 2

  The strange thing is that I remember all this without sound, like some kind of surreal silent film. One of the images in this film is a lamp falling off a little table and smashing. Without a sound.

  We threw the three of them out, and then a strange feeling of embarrassment fell over the apartment. Some people knew, or thought they knew, the reason for this ill-fated punitive expedition. In other words, they knew, or thought they knew, what Francesco had been up to.

  What they didn’t know, and couldn’t begin to imagine, was where I fitted in. And especially how I could possibly have done what I did. They stood in little groups, talking about it, and lowered their voices or stopped speaking when I came near. I wandered from room to room, feeling ill at ease, but trying to put a brave face on it. I thought I’d wait a while longer, and then leave.

  Even I couldn’t understand what I’d done or why I’d done it.

  I broke his nose, I was thinking. Damn it, I broke his nose. One part of me was astounded by the violence I’d been capable of, while another part felt a strange, shameful elation.

  People started to disperse, silently. Obviously, the game hadn’t started up again after the interruption. I could leave now, too, I thought. After all, I’d come alone.

  I put my jacket on and looked for Alessandra, to say goodbye.

  What to say? I wondered. Thanks for the lovely party, I particularly liked the unscheduled part, it gave me a chance to let off steam and satisfy my baser instincts. But maybe she wouldn’t see the joke. Maybe she’d headbutt me herself.

  ‘Shall we go?’ It was Francesco, standing behind me. He also had his jacket on. He was smiling somewhat ironically, but there was something like admiration in his eyes, too.

  I nodded. It was as simple as that. At that moment it seemed natural, even though we barely knew each other.

  Maybe he’ll tell me what it was I just stuck my nose in, I thought.

  We both went to say goodbye to Alessandra, who looked at us strangely. Her eyes were saying a lot of things. I didn’t know the two of you were friends. I knew you were trouble, Francesco – everyone knows that – but you, Giorgio, I never imagined you were just as much of an animal as he is. Jesus, there’s blood on the floor. The blood of the man you headbutted like a hooligan.

  What her eyes were saying above all was: get out of here, both of you, and don’t show your faces here again until the next millennium.

  So we left together. When we were out in the street, we looked round cautiously. Just in case the three guys were stubborn and vindictive enough to try and attack us after the thrashing they’d received.

  ‘Thanks. It took guts to do what you did.’

  I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t that I wanted to seem like a hard man. I really didn’t know what to say.

  We’d started walking.

  ‘Are you on foot?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I don’t live far.’

  ‘I have a car. Maybe we could go for a drive, have a drink, and I’ll tell you all about it. I think I owe you that.’

  ‘OK.’

  He had an old cream-coloured Citroën DS with a burgundy roof.

  ‘So, what do you think that was all about? In your opinion, what did those assholes want?’

  ‘I don’t know. Obviously the blond guy was the one who was after you. The other two were his minders. Was it over a woman?’

  ‘Yes. That blond guy’s a bad loser. But I’d never have expected him to do something as stupid as that.’ He paused, as if he’d just thought of something annoying. ‘Do you mind if we go somewhere,just for half an hour?’

  ‘No. Where?’

  ‘I think I ought to make sure they don’t do anything else stupid. I need to talk to a friend of mine. This place we’re going, you can get a drink as well, if you’re not worried about the time.’

  I nodded, as if I knew what was going on and felt comfortable with it.

  In fact, I didn’t really know what he was talking about. I had a vague idea, just as I was vaguely aware that I was about to cross a threshold that night. Or maybe I’d already crossed it.

  I took a deep breath, settled in my seat in the DS as it glided silently through the deserted streets, and half closed my eyes. Damn it, I thought, I didn’t care. I wanted to go.

  Wherever we were going, I was ready.

  4

  THE FORECOURT OF an old municipal housing estate.

  We got out of the car and walked into one of the big blocks.

  There was no lift. A thin guy was standing on the stairs between the first and second floor, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Francesco greeted him, and he replied with a nod and then jerked his head towards me, questioningly. Who was I?

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  That seemed to be enough. We passed and climbed two more broad flights of stairs. We knocked at a door, and after a few seconds – someone was looking at us through the spyhole – the door was opened by a guy who looked like the older brother of the man on the stairs.

  The interior of the apartment was really strange. A little hall on the right led to a very large room. In it, there was a bar counter, the kind you find sometimes in small hotels, a few tables and a few people sitting drinking and smoking. They seemed to be waiting for something. A record player was playing, at low volume, a scratchy copy of the soundtrack from the film Cabaret.

  There was a small room on the left, leading to another one on the far side. Green baize tables and people playing cards.

  Francesco led me into the room with the bar. ‘Sit down, have a drink, I’ll be right back.’ And without waiting for a reply he went into the other room, walked across it, and disappeared from view. I sat down at the only free table. No one came to take my order, and there was no one behind the bar. So I sat there, doing nothing, sure that everyone was looking at me and wondering who I was and what I was doing there.

  In actual fact, no one was taking the slightest notice of me. They were all talking among themselves, and every now and again one of them turned round to look towards the other room. They were almost all men. Surreptitiously, I started observing the only two women in the room. One was short and fat, with narrow eyes close together and a brutish expression. She was sitting with two nondescript-looking men, and she was the one doing all the talking, in a low voice and a tone of barely contained anger.

  The other woman was a very attractive brunette – though she must have been at least fifteen years older than me. A woollen V-necked sweater gave a glimpse of cleavage. She was the only person in the room I’d have liked to notice me. But she seemed completely smitten with the guy next to her, who was wearing a jacket and tie and a solid gold watch.

  I was fantasising about the brunette – not the kind of thoughts I could have discussed with my maiden aunts – when Francesco materialised on the chair opposite me.

  ‘Emma.’

  I jumped slightly. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Her name is Emma. She’s married to C.M., but they’re separated. You know who C.M. is, don’t you? The frozen food guy. Five million a month in alimony and a house on the Piazza Umberto. A bit touched up here and there, but quite a dish all the same. Didn’t you get a drink?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone–’

  Francesco stood up, went behind the bar, and poured two glasses of whisky. He came back to the table and handed me one. Then we lit cigarettes.

  ‘So, why did you do what you did tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never headbutted anyone in my life.’

  ‘That’s odd, then. The way you broke his nose looked very professional. Did someone teach you?’

  Yes, someone had taught me.

  When I was fourteen or fifteen my friends and I often hung out in a billiard hall close to where I lived. Most of the time, we played ping pong, or sometimes pocket billiards. The place didn’t exactly attract a high class clientele, and once I said something I shouldn’t to this guy who was already a criminal at the age of sixteen. I mean a professiona
l criminal. Dealing drugs, stealing cars, that kind of thing. I never found out his name, but everyone called him – when he wasn’t around – Stinky. Personal hygiene wasn’t really his thing.

  Naturally, he played me like a bongo, while my friends did nothing. I almost expected them to look away and whistle. Anyway, while I was taking the beating and trying to limit the damage, another man stepped in. He was a criminal too, and all of eighteen years old. He was bigger than the other guy and, what’s more, he was well known for being a lot more dangerous.

  His name was Feluccio. Feluccio the Big Man. He was into all sorts of dodgy business and kept order in the whole of the block where the billiard hall was located. Of course, his idea of order was a very personal one, but that’s another subject. For some reason, he liked me.

  He bought me a beer and gave me a dishcloth with ice in it for the bruises. He told me I couldn’t just take the blows like that. I replied that I could, and I was still here to prove it, but he didn’t catch my subtle humour. He was worried about what was going to happen to me out in the urban jungle and decided I should be his pupil. He’d developed his own system of unarmed combat. If he’d been born in the Far East, he might have become a great master. Instead, he was here, in Bari, and he was Feluccio the Big Man, the street brawl and football stadium bust-up champion of the Libertà neighbourhood.

  In the little yard at the back of the billiard hall, Feluccio the Big Man taught me how to headbutt my opponent, how to knee him in the balls, how to slap him on the ear to deafen him, how to elbow him in the chin. He taught me how to bring down someone bigger than me, by simultaneously pulling him by the hair and kicking him on the inside of the knee.

  I don’t know how far we’d have gone if my teacher hadn’t been arrested one day by the carabinieri for a robbery. That was the end of my apprenticeship in the art of street fighting.

  ‘That’s how I learned to headbutt. At least now I know it works.’

  ‘It’s a nice story,’ Francesco said when I’d finished telling it.

  ‘You’re right, it’s a nice story. What is this place?’

  ‘Can’t you see? It’s a kind of casino. Illegal, obviously. This room is where people wait to play. The first room is for the smaller games. The other rooms,’ he made a vague gesture with his hand, ‘are where they play for serious money.’

  He drank some of his whisky and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘I talked to that friend of mine,’ he said, making the same gesture with his hand. ‘We can breathe easily now. Someone will pay a visit to our friends from tonight and explain that it’s not a good idea to cause any more trouble. And that’ll be it.’

  ‘How is it that you know…these people?’

  ‘I come here to play sometimes.’

  At that moment, another group of people arrived. Three girls, more or less my age, and two men, much older. About forty at least, with Rolexes, expensive suits and faces to match. One of the girls looked long and hard at Francesco, as if trying to meet his eyes. It didn’t work.

  ‘I think it’s time to go – unless you’d like to sit in on a few games.’

  ‘No, no. Let’s go.’

  So we stood up and walked to the main door. Francesco made no move to pay for the whisky. I was about to say something, worried that some roughneck would follow us down the stairs and shoot us in the legs, as punishment. Then it occurred to me that Francesco knew what he was doing. Maybe he had an open tab in this dive – pardon, casino – and in the end I said nothing. The girl kept looking at Francesco as we left the room. We said goodbye to the guy at the door, and the one on the stairs, and walked back outside.

  When we drew up outside my building, Francesco asked me if I fancied a game of poker one of these evenings. At the home of some friends, he hastened to add, noticing the look of hesitation in my eyes. I told him my phone number – he didn’t write it down, just committed it to memory – and we shook hands and said goodnight.

  He owed me one, he said through the lowered car window when I was already out of the car and fiddling with my key in the defective lock. By the time I turned, he’d gone.

  I went straight to bed, and stayed awake until the dawn light started to filter through the cracks in the shutters.

  5

  I WAS A MODEL STUDENT. Last year of law, ahead with my exams, my thesis on criminal law almost finished, and with a near-perfect record in my assessments. I was due to graduate in June, and then I would decide what to do. Teach at university or take the exam to become a magistrate. All very straightforward, very neat and tidy.

  I’d been with Giulia for nearly two years. She was a medical student, the same age as me. She wanted to be a doctor, like her dad. She was pretty and petite. Her mum liked me a lot. All my girlfriends’ mothers had liked me.

  Everything was going well.

  Francesco phoned me four or five days later. The New Year had come and gone, and it was already 1989.

  Did I still fancy a game of poker? Yes, I did. So we made an appointment for ten that evening, at the apartment of someone I didn’t know. He gave me the name and address and I said I’d be there.

  At nine I quarrelled with Giulia – our first real quarrel since we’d been together, but not the last – and by ten I was at the address Francesco had given me.

  I’d brought five hundred thousand lire with me, which for me was quite a lot. I didn’t want to look poor.

  The other people there besides Francesco were the owner of the apartment – a fair-haired guy with long, oily hair, named Roberto – and a rather dirty-looking man of about forty. He introduced himself only by his surname – Massaro – and for the whole evening no one called him by his first name.

  It was a shabby apartment. The furniture was of poor quality, and naked bulbs hung from the ceiling.

  We played in the kitchen. The fair-haired guy put a bottle of whisky and two plastic cups next to the sink. He said we could help ourselves, which we did many times during the course of the evening, until the bottle was empty. Only Francesco drank hardly anything.

  We started playing. The custom of the house was to play three hands of draw poker to one of stud poker. There was a fixed stake of ten thousand lire and a limit to how high the pot could go. The game was obviously out of my league. But I was ashamed to leave, so I started losing, a little at a time. I’d put in my stake, maybe make the first bet, then they’d up the ante and I’d have to fold because I was afraid of losing everything in a single hand. I did win a couple of small pots but after playing for about two hours I had almost nothing left and was cursing my own stupidity. Then something happened.

  It was time to play stud poker, and Francesco dealt. One card face down, then one card face up. My face-up card was a queen, and so was my face-down card. The fair-haired guy had a ten, Massaro a king, Francesco an ace.

  ‘Fifty,’ Francesco said. The other two played immediately. I thought about it for a few seconds – I had just over a hundred thousand lire left – and then told myself, what the hell, I would lose the rest of my money, call it a day and never play again in my life. It would be a lesson to me.

  Again, Francesco turned over the cards. I had the third queen. I felt my heart racing. The fair-haired guy got another ten, and Massaro a jack. Francesco got another ace, so the choice was his.

  ‘Two hundred thousand.’ In other words, everything in the pot and more than I had left.

  Damn, damn, damn, what do I do? The host played, Massaro said he was folding, and I said I didn’t have all the money. Would there be any problem about giving me credit? No, Francesco said, no problem. The other man nodded. He probably didn’t trust me, but didn’t know how to say it. I put everything I had left in the middle of the table and we wrote down on a sheet of paper how much I owed the pot. Then Francesco dealt, for the penultimate time. An ace of hearts for me, a third ten for the fair-haired guy. A seven for Francesco.

  ‘Five hundred thousand,’ the fair-haired guy said.

  Francesco passed, and I said
I had to think. In fact I was genuinely terrified, and was trying to figure out what to do. What if his face-down card was the fourth ten? I had savings in the bank, but it seemed like madness to throw them away like this. Why the hell had I come? Why? I looked around and for a moment met Francesco’s eyes.

  He moved his head imperceptibly, as if telling me to play. I immediately looked away, afraid the others had noticed. They hadn’t, so I played, writing down the vast amount I owed on the sheet of paper.

  The last two cards slid across the table. A king for the fair-haired guy.

  The fourth queen for me.

  I was sure I could hear my heart beating wildly. Damn, I had four queens, which meant I was sure to have won. I prayed that the fair-haired guy’s face-down card was the fourth ten, or at least a king. Because then he would play, come what may, and I would win. I felt as if I was going mad with the effort I was making to control myself. I felt as if a drug was coursing through my veins. I felt as if I was having an endless orgasm.

  ‘It’s up to the man with the three queens,’ the fair-haired guy said. From the way he said it, I was sure he had either four tens or a full house. That meant he was certain he was going to win, going to tear me apart.

  ‘One million lire.’ The words, as I said them, sounded unreal, first in my mouth and then in the smoky, almost palpable air of that kitchen. What was a million? It was an unreal entity. At least it had been an unreal entity up until a few minutes earlier, but now it was being transformed into something concrete. Something that could be multiplied.

  ‘Do you have the money?’ the host asked, with a hint of contempt in his voice.

  I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. I was ashamed and angry because they were treating me like a pauper. I was also scared stiff that he would try to stop me playing because I didn’t have the money. I made an effort to keep my voice under control.