“No, I gave it back to you!”
Via Guerrazzi, in the heart of the student quarter of the oldest university city on the continent. Simon Herzog and Jacques Bayard enter an old Bolognan palace, now the headquarters of the DAMS: Discipline Arte Musica e Spettacolo. From what they are able to decipher from the obscure headings on the noticeboard, it is here, each week, that Professor Eco gave his biannual course. But the professor is not there; a porter explains in perfect French that classes are over (“I knew it was stupid to go to a university during the summer!” says Simon to Bayard) but that he will in all probability be at a café: “He usually goes to the Drogheria Calzolari or the Osteria del Sole. Ma, the Drogheria closes earlier. So it depends how thirsty he is, il professore.”
The two men cross the sublime Piazza Maggiore, with its unfinished fourteenth-century basilica, half in white marble, half in ocher stone, and its fountain of Neptune surrounded by fat, obscene nereids who touch their breasts while straddling demonic-looking dolphins. They find the Osteria del Sole in a tiny alleyway, already packed with students. On the wall outside they read: Lavovare meno—lavovare tutti! Having a bit of Latin, Simon is able to decipher: “Work less—work for all.” Bayard thinks: “Lazy-ass whiners everywhere, workers nowhere.”
In the entrance hall is a huge poster of a sun drawn in the style of an alchemist’s sign. Here, you can drink wine pretty cheaply and bring your own food. Simon orders two glasses of Sangiovese while Bayard asks after Umberto Eco. Everyone seems to know him but, as they say: Non ora, non qui. The two Frenchmen decide to stay for a while anyway, sheltered from the oppressive heat, in case Eco turns up.
At the back of the L-shaped room a group of students is noisily celebrating a young woman’s birthday; her friends have given her a toaster, which she shows off gratefully. There are some old people, too, but Simon notices that they are all sitting at the bar, near the entrance, and he realizes that’s so they don’t have to make a trip to order a drink, because there is no waiter service in the café. Behind the bar, an old, severe-looking woman dressed in black, her gray hair tied neatly in a bun, directs operations. Simon guesses that she is the manager’s mother, so he scans the room and soon spots him: a tall, gangling man playing cards at a table. From the way he grumbles and his exaggerated air of unpleasantness, Simon guesses that he works here and, given that he is not actually working, since he’s playing cards (Simon doesn’t recognize the type of cards; it looks like some kind of tarot deck), that must be him, the boss. From time to time his mother calls out to him: “Luciano! Luciano!” He responds with grunts.
In the corner of the L is a door that leads to a small internal courtyard, which functions as a terrace; Simon and Bayard see some couples kissing there and three conspiratorial young men in scarves. Simon also detects a few foreigners, their non-Italianness betrayed in one way or another by their clothes, body language, or facial expressions. The events of the previous months have left him a little paranoid and he imagines he can see Bulgarians everywhere.
The atmosphere is not particularly conducive to paranoia, however. People unwrap little cakes stuffed with bacon and pesto, or nibble on artichokes. Everyone smokes, of course. Simon does not spot the young conspirators in the little courtyard exchange a packet under the table. Bayard orders another glass of wine. Soon, one of the students at the back of the room walks over to offer them a glass of Prosecco and a slice of apple cake. His name is Enzo, he is extremely talkative, and he, too, speaks French. He invites them to join his friends, who are arguing joyfully about politics, to judge by the yells of “fascisti,” “communisti,” “coalizione,” “combinazione,” and “corruzione.” Simon asks about the meaning of pitchi, which keeps cropping up in their conversation. A short, olive-skinned brunette stops mid-sentence to explain to them in French that this is how “PC”—the initials of the Communist Party—is pronounced in Italian. She tells him that all the political parties are corrupt, even the Communists, who are notabili ready to play along with the bosses and cut deals with the Christian Democrats. Thankfully, the Red Brigades overturned the compromesso storico by kidnapping Aldo Moro. Fair enough, they killed him, but that’s the fault of the pope and that porco Andreotti, who refused to negotiate.
Luciano, who heard her talking to the Frenchmen, waves his arms and shouts over to her: “Ma, che dici! Le Brigate Rosse sono degli assassini! They killed him and they tossed him in the boot of the macchina, like un cane!”
The girl swivels to face him: “Il cane sei tu! They’re at war. They wanted to swap him for their comrades, political prisoners. They waited fifty-five days for the government to agree to talk with them, nearly two whole months! The government refused. Not a single prisoner, Andreotti said! Moro begged them: my friends, save me, I’m innocent, you must negoziare! And all his friends, they said: that’s not him, he’s been drugged, he’s been coerced, he’s changed! That’s not the Aldo I knew, they said, ’sti figli di putana!”
And she pretends to spit before downing the contents of her glass, then she turns back to Simon with a smile, while Luciano returns to his tarocchino, mumbling incomprehensibly.
Her name is Bianca. She has very dark eyes and very white teeth. She is Neapolitan. She is studying political science. She would like to be a journalist, but not for the bourgeois press. Simon nods and smiles idiotically. He gets a few brownie points when he says he’s working on his thesis at Vincennes. Bianca claps her hands: three years ago, a huge conference took place here, in Bologna, with the great French intellectuals, Guattari, Sartre, and that young guy in a white shirt, Lévy … She interviewed Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir for Lotta Continua. Sartre said, she recites from memory, one finger in the air: “I cannot accept that a young activist could be murdered in the streets of a city governed by the Communist Party.” And, fellow traveler that he was, he declared: “I am on the side of the young activist.” It was magnifico! She remembers that Guattari was welcomed like a rock star; in the streets, it was madness, you’d have thought he was John Lennon. One day, he took part in a protest march, he met Bernard-Henri Lévy, so he made him leave the procession, because the students were really excited and ’cause the philosopher in the camicia bianca, he was going to get beaten up. Bianca bursts out laughing and pours herself more Prosecco.
But Enzo, who is chatting with Bayard, gets involved in the conversation: “The Brigate Rosse? Ma, left-wing terrorists … they’re still terrorists, no?”
Bianca flares up again: “Ma che terroristi? Activists who use violence as a means of action, ecco!”