flourish. They were fantasies of war, for the most part, or rather of suffering. His victims were Swedish wooden matchsticks, which he arranged behind bits of wall or in trenches scooped from the dirt and then bombarded mercilessly with bricks, from a distance at first but gradually closing in until you could see the sharp edges of the missile gouging into the ground. But the best bit was afterwards, picking through the bent and broken splinters, picturing the appalling injuries, the grotesque mutilations, the agony, the screams, the pathetic pleas to be finished off. He played all the parts himself, his voice mimicking shells and explosions, sirens and screams. In that secret playworld he was blissfully transparent, secure in the knowledge that the gates of the abandoned factory were locked and guarded, the walls too high to climb and topped with shards of broken glass.
Then one day he looked up and found a pair of eyes on him.
The man was lean and hard and dirty, his clothes greasy and torn. Silvio had never seen a Communist before, but he knew instinctively that this was one. His father had told him how the Communists were going to take over the factories and kill the owners and their families. Silvio fled, and for weeks he stayed away. Then, gradually at first, he found that the danger was no longer a reason for avoiding the factory but rather an irresistible temptation to return. He had no further interest in his innocent games. They were lost to him for ever, he knew, part of something he now thought of for the first time as his childhood. If he was to go back it would be in exploration of a new dimension he felt opening up within himself. It was not a comfortable sensation. He felt wrenched apart internally, split and fractured like one of his matchstick heroes. But there was no denying that urge. He already knew he would be its willing slave for the rest of his life.
The second time he saw the man it was Silvio who had the advantage of surprise. He had rounded a length of wall, moving stealthily, and there in a corner he saw the figure, turned away, head bent, intent on some furtive task. He knew he should run for his life, but instead he found himself moving towards the man, who remained quite still, apparently unaware of his presence. Then, when Silvio was almost close enough to touch him, he suddenly whirled around and sent a high spray of urine flying through the air, splashing Silvio’s clothes and face, his lips, his mouth.
Afterwards he drenched himself with the garden hose and told his parents that the rough boys near the station had thrown him in the fountain. His clothes came back unspotted from the laundry, but the obscene warmth and acrid taste of the bright yellow liquid had marked his flesh as indelibly as a tattoo. He never returned to the factory, which shortly afterwards was spruced up into offices and parking space for the management of what would soon become SIMP. But those barren desolate landscapes were now a part of him, like that stain which no water could wash off. Whenever he touched himself in bed at night he was there again, at risk from merciless mocking strangers, drenched in their stink and slime, both cringing and exultant.
‘You see, dottore?’ Zen remarked ironically. ‘I told you I knew where you were going.’
It was suffocatingly hot. The great mounds of bricks were high enough to prevent the slightest breeze from entering but not to give any shade from the sun. Silvio could feel little rivulets of sweat running down the creases and furrows in his body, trickling through the hairy parts and soaking into his underclothes.
‘Naturally I didn’t just happen to be waiting at that bend in the road by pure coincidence,’ Zen went on.
‘It’s a plot!’ Silvio muttered.
‘Yes, it’s a plot. But you’re only the means, not the end. All I need from you is your signature on these papers.’
Zen handed him the clipboard. The sun made a dazzling blank of the page, and Silvio had to turn so that the clipboard was in his shadow before he was able to make out anything except the crest printed at the top. Even then it took him a long time to see what it was about, because of the florid formulas and the stilted tone of the text. When understanding suddenly came he almost cried out with a pain as different from the gaudy agonies of his fantasies as a gallon of make-up blood is from a drop of the real thing.
He had never forgotten his mother’s strict orders not to venture into the site where he had first experienced those horrid thrills, and when she was taken from him a few years later he knew that he was being punished for his disobedience. Not that this stopped him indulging; on the contrary, guilt made his forbidden pleasures taste still sourer and stronger. But the gentle hurt of her absence was something else. Nothing could assuage that, until Ivy came. And now…
‘You must be out of your mind!’
Unfortunately, as so often happened when he got angry, his voice let him down, and the words emerged as an imperious squeak.
‘It’s nothing to do with me, dottore,’ Zen assured him. ‘I’m only following orders.’
‘Whose orders?’
‘Can’t you work it out for yourself?’
Silvio struggled to summon up the small residue of cunning which he had inherited from his father. This man had known that he would be passing that spot on the road. Therefore he must have known that he was going to Crepi’s, although he claimed that Crepi himself hadn’t known. In other words, the summons from Spinelli had been nothing but a ruse designed to draw him into an ambush. So the banker must be part of the plot. But he was only a minor figure, like this man Zen. Who controlled them both? The obvious answer was Gianluigi Santucci, the banker’s patron. But Gianluigi wouldn’t waste his energy on petty vendettas of this type. No, it could only be…
‘Cinzia,’ he murmured.
Silvio threw the clipboard to the ground at Zen’s feet.
‘You can go fuck yourself.’
‘We don’t expect you to do it for nothing, of course,’ Zen said mildly, dusting down the papers.
‘You’re trying to bribe me?’
Although eminently unworldly in his way, Silvio was enough of a Miletti to resent the idea that anyone would presume to patronize him financially.
‘No, it’s a question of a few souvenirs, that’s all. Souvenirs of Berlin.’
Zen took two photographs from the large yellow envelope and held them up.
Instantly Silvio’s real pain and righteous anger were overwhelmed by stronger sensations. To think that all the time this beast had known, had seen!
‘No, I won’t do it!’
He knew very well that this petulant refusal wasn’t worth the paper it was wiped with, as dear Gerhard would put it. But Zen seemed to have been taken in.
‘In that case I’m afraid that prints of these photographs will begin to circulate among friends and enemies of the Miletti family in Perugia and elsewhere. Just imagine the scene, dottore! There they are, early in the morning, still dewy-eyed over that first cup of coffee, when bang! Hello! What’s this? Good God! It looks like Silvio Miletti waiting for someone to come and take a dump on him! What do you think their reaction is going to be, dottore? Oh, well, it takes all sorts, different strokes for different folks, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it?’
Silvio was literally speechless. The idea of those images being seen by people who inhabited a quite separate zone of his life, whom he met at receptions and conferences, at dinners and concerts, who greeted him on the Corso every day! Yes, he would have to sign, no question about that. The revelation of his secret pleasures to the whole of Perugia would be a humiliation so monumental, so absolute, so perfect, that he knew he would never survive the excitement it would generate.
But at the thought of what he was about to do, these thrills faded and the real pain returned.
‘But it’s all lies! Filthy obscene lies and nothing else!’
To his amazement, Zen winked conspiratorially.
‘Of course it is! That’s why it doesn’t matter. In fact the kidnappers are already under arrest in Florence. They’ve confessed to the whole thing. Believe me, dottore, if I thought for a single moment that these allegations would be taken seriously, I’d never have agreed to be a party to this! But it’s just a question of stirring up a bit of scandal, a bit of dirt. Quite harmless really.’
The man’s whinging hypocrisy made Silvio feel sick, but what he said made sense. If the gang had confessed then the papers he was being asked to sign were totally worthless except precisely to someone like Cinzia, someone who would stoop to any trick to sully the honour of the woman he loved and whose love sustained him. But they would deal with Cinzia later. Meanwhile he must get this over with and warn Ivy immediately. It was awful to think how she might suffer if she was suddenly confronted with his apparent treachery.
‘Just put your name on the dotted line at the bottom, dottore,’ Zen prompted. ‘Where it says that you made the statement freely and voluntarily.’
