“And then the Camorra embezzled millions that the European Commission gave the city because they’re in control of the reconstruction contracts. So of course, they didn’t do anything, or they did such shoddy work that it’s just as dangerous as before. There are accidents all the time. Neapolitans are used to them.”
Simon and Bianca are sipping coffee on the terrace of the Gambrinus, a very touristy literary café and pastry shop that Simon chose for this meeting. He nibbles a rum baba.
Bianca explains that the expression “See Naples and die” (vedi Napoli e poi muori; in Latin, videre Neapolim et Mori) is in fact a play on words: Mori is a small town near Naples.
She also tells him the history of the pizza: one day, Queen Margherita, married to the king of Italy, Umberto I, discovered this popular meal and made it famous throughout Italy. In tribute, a pizza was named after her, the one containing the colors of the national flag: green (basil), white (mozzarella), and red (tomato).
Up to now, she has not asked a single question about his hand.
A white Fiat double-parks near them.
Bianca becomes more and more animated. She starts talking politics. She tells Simon again about the hatred she feels for bourgeois people who hoard all the wealth and starve the people. “Can you believe it, Simon? Some of those bourgeois bastards spend hundreds of thousands of lire just to buy a handbag. A handbag, Simon!”
Two young men get out of the white Fiat and sit on the terrace. They are joined by a third, a biker who parks his Triumph on the pavement. Bianca can’t see them because they are behind her back. It is the scarf gang from Bologna.
If Simon is surprised to see them here, he doesn’t show it.
Bianca sobs with rage, thinking about the excesses of the Italian middle classes. She heaps insults on Reagan. She is suspicious of Mitterrand because, on that side of the Alps as on this one, the socialists are always traitors. Bettino Craxi is a piece of shit. They all deserve to die, and she would happily execute them herself given the chance. The world seems infinitely dark to her, thinks Simon, who cannot really claim she is wrong.
The three young men have ordered beers and lit cigarettes when another character arrives, already known to Simon: his Venice opponent, the man who mutilated him, flanked by two bodyguards.
Simon leans over his rum baba, hiding his face. The man shakes hands like a VIP, a local elected official or a high-ranking Camorra member (the distinction is often not very clear, here). He disappears inside the café.
Bianca spits on Forlani and his Pentapartito government. Simon worries that she is having a nervous breakdown. Attempting to calm her, he utters some soothing words—“come on, not everything’s that bad, think about Nicaragua…”—and moves his hand under the table to rest on her knee, but through the fabric of Bianca’s trouser leg he touches something hard that is not flesh.
Bianca, startled, abruptly pulls her leg beneath her chair. She immediately stops sobbing. She stares at Simon, defiant and imploring at the same time. There is rage, anger, and love in her tears.
Simon says nothing. So, that’s how it is: a happy ending. The one-handed man and the one-legged girl. And, as in all good stories, some guilt to drag around with him: if Bianca lost her leg at Bologna Central, it was his fault. If she had never met him, she would have two legs and would still be able to wear skirts.
But then again, they would also not form this touching handicapped couple. Will they marry and make lots of little Leftists?
Except that this is not the final scene that he had in mind.
Yes, while visiting Naples, he wanted to see Bianca, the young woman he fucked on a dissecting table in Bologna, but right now he has other plans.
Simon makes an imperceptible nod to one of the young men in scarves.
The three of them stand up, put their scarves over their mouths, and enter the café.
Simon and Bianca exchange a long look, communicating an infinity of messages, stories, and emotions, of the past, the present, and, already, the conditional past (the worst of all, the tense of regrets).
The sound of two gunshots. Screams and confusion.
The gang emerge, pushing Simon’s opponent forward. One of the three has his P38 wedged in the lower back of the important Camorra member. Another sweeps the terrace with his, threatening the shocked clientele.
As he passes Simon, the third gang member puts something on the table, which Simon covers with his napkin.
They shove the Camorra guy in the back of the Fiat and speed off.
There is panic in the café. Simon listens to the screams from inside and understands that the two bodyguards are injured. Each one has a bullet in his leg, as planned.
Simon says to the frightened-looking Bianca: “Come with me.”
He leads her over to the third man’s motorbike and hands her the napkin, inside which is a key. He says to Bianca: “Drive.”
Bianca protests: she’s ridden a scooter before, but never a bike as powerful as this one.
Lifting his right arm, Simon says, scowling: “Well, I can’t either.”
So Bianca straddles the Triumph, Simon kickstarts it and sits behind her, arms around her waist, and she twists the handle to accelerate, sending the bike flying forward. Bianca asks which direction she should take and Simon replies: “Pozzuoli.”
99
It is like a lunar landscape, somewhere between a spaghetti western and a science fiction film.
At the center of an immense crater coated with whitish clay, the three gang members surround the paunchy VIP, who is kneeling next to a boiling mud pit.
Around them, geysers of sulfur burst from the bowels of the earth. The air is thick with the stench of rotten eggs.
Simon’s first thought was to go to the Sibyl’s cave in Cumae, where no one would have come to find them, but he decided against that because it was too kitsch, too obviously symbolic, and he’s getting tired of symbols. Except it is not that easy to get away from them: as they tread the cracked earth, Bianca tells him that the Romans believed the Solfatara, this dormant volcano, to be the gates of Hell. Okay …
“Salve! What do we do with him, compagno?”
Bianca, who had not recognized the three men at the Gambrinus, asks wide-eyed:
“You hired the Red Brigades from Bologna?”
“I thought they weren’t necessarily the Red Brigades; isn’t that what you insisted to your friend Enzo?”
“No one hired us.”
“Non siamo dei mercenari.”
“No, it’s true, they did this for free. I convinced them.”
“To kidnap this guy?”
“Si tratta di un uomo politico corrotto di Napoli.”
“He hands out building permits from the mayor’s office. Thanks to the permits he sold the Camorra, hundreds of people died during the terremoto, crushed by the rotten buildings the Camorra had constructed.”
Simon approaches the man and rubs his stump against the man’s face. “Not only that, but he’s a bad loser.” The man shakes his head like an animal. “Strunz! Si mmuort!”
The three Red Brigades members suggest ransoming him in exchange for a revolutionary hostage. The French-speaker among them turns to Simon: “Ma, it’s not certain that anyone will want to pay for a pig like him, ha ha!” The three men laugh, and Bianca, too, though she wants him to die, even if she doesn’t say so.
An Aldo Moro–style uncertainty: Simon likes that. He wants vengeance, but he also likes the idea of leaving it to chance. He grabs the Camorra man’s chin in his left hand and squeezes it like a vise. “You understand the alternatives? Either your body is found in the boot of a Renault 4L or you can go home and continue being a bastard. But don’t you dare set foot in the Logos Club again.” He remembers their duel in Venice, the only one in which he ever truly felt in danger. “Anyway, how does a peasant like you end up so cultivated? You find time to go to the theater when you’re not too busy organizing crimes?” But he immediately regrets this question, loaded as it is with politically incorrect prejudices.
He releases the man’s chin, which immediately starts wagging. He speaks very rapidly in Italian. Simon asks Bianca: “What’s he on about?”