Numero Zero (7 page)

“The names of these characters are enough in themselves to make news,” said Simei, who had been taking notes enthusiastically. “Just think, Paul de Granier de Cassagnac, Licastro (what did you say?) Grimaldi Lascaris Comneno Ventimiglia, Carlo Stivala of Flavigny . . .”

“. . . Robert Bassaraba von Brancovan Khimchiacvili,” Lucidi repeated jubilantly.

“I think quite a number of our readers will have been taken in by propositions of this kind,” I added. “We can help protect them from these opportunists.”

Simei hesitated for a moment and said he would give it some thought. The following day he had evidently done some research and told us that our proprietor had received the title of Commendatore from the Order of Saint Mary of Bethlehem: “It turns out that the Order of Saint Mary of Bethlehem was another fake order. The real one was that of Saint Mary of Jerusalem, the Ordo Fratrum Domus Hospitalis Sanctae Mariae Teutonicorum in Jerusalem. It is recognized by the
Pontifical Yearbook
, though I certainly wouldn't place my trust in that, with all that's been going on in the Vatican, but in any event a Commendatore of the Order of Saint Mary of Bethlehem is worth about as little as that of the Mayor of Cockaigne. And do you really want to publish an article that throws a shadow of doubt, even ridicule, on the title of our Commendatore? Each to his own delusion. I'm sorry, Lucidi, but we'll have to scrap your fine article.”

“You're saying we have to check whether or not the Commendatore is going to like each article?” asked Cambria, our specialist in stupid questions.

“Of course,” replied Simei. “He's our majority shareholder, as they say.”

At this point Maia plucked up the courage to mention a possible line of investigation. The story was this. In the Porta Ticinese district, in a part of the city that was becoming increasingly popular with tourists, there was a restaurant and pizzeria called Paglia e Fieno. Maia, who lives by the canals, has been walking past it for years. And for years this vast restaurant, through whose windows you could glimpse at least a hundred seats, was always depressingly empty, except for a few tourists drinking coffee at the tables outside. And it wasn't as if the place was abandoned. Maia had once been inside, out of curiosity, and was alone, except for a small family group twenty tables farther down. She had ordered a dish of
paglia e fieno
, of course, with a quarter liter of white wine and some apple tart, all excellent fare and reasonably priced, with extremely polite waiters. Now, if someone runs premises as vast as that, with staff, kitchen, and so forth, and no one goes there for years, if they had any sense they would sell it off. And yet Paglia e Fieno has been open for maybe ten years, pretty well three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

“There's something strange going on there,” observed Costanza.

“Not really,” replied Maia. “The explanation is obvious. It's a place owned by the triads, or the Mafia, or the Camorra. It's been bought with dirty money and it's a good, upfront investment. But, you say, the investment is already there, it's in the value of the building, and they could keep it shut down, without putting any more money into it. And yet no—it's open and running. Why?”

“Yes, why?” asked Cambria again.

Her reply revealed that Maia had a smart little brain. “The premises are used, day in day out, for laundering dirty money that's constantly flowing in. You serve the few customers who turn up each evening, but each evening you ring up a series of false till receipts as though you'd had a hundred customers. Once you've registered that amount, you take it to the bank—and perhaps, so as not to attract attention to all that cash, since no one's paying by credit card, you open accounts in twenty different banks. On this sum, which is now legal, you pay all the necessary taxes, after generous deductions for operating expenses and supplies (it's not hard to get false invoices). It's well known that for money laundering you have to count on losing fifty percent. With this system, you lose much less.”

“But how do you prove all this?” asked Palatino.

“Simple,” replied Maia. “Two revenue officers go there for dinner, a man and woman, looking like newlyweds, and as they're eating they look around and see there are, let's say, just two other customers. Next day the police go and check, find that a hundred till receipts have been rung up, and I'd like to see what those people will have to say for themselves.”

“It's not so simple,” I pointed out. “The two revenue officers go there, say, at eight o'clock, but however much they eat, they will have to leave by nine, otherwise they'll look suspicious. Who can prove that the hundred customers weren't there between nine and midnight? You then have to send at least three or four couples to cover the evening. Now, if they do a check the next morning, what's going to happen? The police are thrilled to find someone's been underdeclaring, but what can they do with someone who's declaring too much? The restaurant can always say the machine got stuck, that it kept printing out the same thing. And what then? A second check? They're not stupid, they've now figured out who the officers are, and when they come back they won't ring up any false till receipts that evening. Or the police have to keep checking night after night, sending out half an army to eat pizzas, and perhaps after a year they'd manage to close them down, but it's just as likely they'd get bored well before that, because they've got other things to do.”

“That's for the police to decide,” Maia replied resentfully. “They'll find some clever way—we just have to point out the problem.”

“My dear,” said Simei affably, “I'll tell you what will happen if we cover this investigation. First, we'll have the police on our backs, as you'll be criticizing them for failing to detect the fraud—and they know how to get their revenge, if not against us then certainly against the Commendatore. And as you say yourself, we have the triads, the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, or whoever else, and you think they're going to be pleased? And do we sit here as good as gold, waiting for them to bomb our offices? Finally, you know what I say? That our readers will be thrilled to eat a good cheap meal in a place that comes straight out of a detective story, so that Paglia e Fieno will be packed with morons and our only accomplishment will be that we've made them a fortune. So we can forget that one. Don't you worry, just go back to your horoscopes.”

7

I
COULD SEE HOW DISPIRITED
Maia was, and I caught up with her as she was leaving. Instinctively I took her by the arm.

“Don't take it personally, Maia. Let's go, I'll walk you home. We could have a drink on the way.”

“I live by the canals, plenty of bars around there. There's one I know that does an excellent Bellini, my great passion. Thanks.”

We reached Ripa Ticinese, and I saw the canals for the first time. I'd heard about them, of course, but was convinced they were all underground, and yet it felt as if we were in Amsterdam. Maia told me with a certain pride that Milan had once been very much like Amsterdam, crisscrossed by canals right to the center. It must have been beautiful, which was why Stendhal had so liked it. But later they had covered the canals for public health reasons, and only here were they still visible, with their putrid water, though at one time there were washerwomen along the banks. And in some of the side streets you could still see rows of old houses and many
case di ringhiera
.

Case di ringhiera
, large old buildings with an inner courtyard and iron railings circling the upper floors. They were places I'd heard about, images of the 1950s that I'd come across when editing encyclopedias or when referring to the performance of Bertolazzi's
El Nost Milan
at the Piccolo Teatro. But I didn't imagine any still existed.

Maia laughed. “Milan is full of
case di ringhiera
, except that they're no longer for poor people. Come, I'll show you.” She took me into a double courtyard. “Here on the ground floor it's been completely redeveloped. There are workshops for small antiques dealers—though really just glorified junk shops charging high prices—and the studios of painters in search of fame. Now it's all stuff for tourists. But up there, those two floors are exactly as they used to be.”

I could see the iron railings around the upper floors, and doors that opened onto each balcony, and I asked whether anyone still hung their wash out to dry.

Maia smiled. “We're not in Naples. Almost all of it has been renovated. At one time the steps went straight up to the balcony, which led to each front door, and at the far end was a single toilet for several families, with a hole in the floor, and you could forget any idea of a shower or a bath. Now it has all been done up for the rich. Some apartments even have a Jacuzzi and they cost an arm and a leg. Less where I live. I've got two rooms with water dripping down the walls, though fortunately they've put in a toilet and a shower, but I love the area. Soon, of course, they'll be fixing that up as well. Then I'll have to move out, I won't be able to afford the rent, unless
Domani
gets going pretty soon and they take me on permanently. That's why I put up with all this humiliation.”

“Don't take it personally, Maia. It's obvious that during a trial period we have to learn what we can write and what we can't. In any event, Simei has responsibilities, to the paper and to the publisher. Perhaps you could do as you liked when you worked on celebrity romance, but here it's different, we're working on a newspaper.”

“And that's why I was hoping to get away from all that celebrity garbage, I wanted to be a serious journalist. But perhaps I'm a failure. I never graduated, I had to help my parents, then they died, and it was too late to go back. I'm living in a hole. I'll never be the special correspondent covering the Gulf War . . . What am I doing? Horoscopes, taking advantage of suckers. Isn't that failure?”

“We've only just started. There'll be opportunities for someone like you as soon as we've launched. You've come up with some brilliant ideas. I liked them, and I think Simei liked them too.”

I could feel I was lying to her. I should have told her that she was walking into a blind alley, that they'd never send her off to the Gulf, that perhaps it would be better for her to get out before it was too late. But I couldn't depress her any further. I decided instead to tell her the truth, not about her but about me.

And since I was about to bare my soul, like a poet, I adopted a more intimate tone, almost without realizing it.

“Look at me, Maia, see me as I am. I didn't get a degree either. All my life I've done occasional jobs, and now I've ended up past the age of fifty at a newspaper. But you know when I really began to be a loser? When I started thinking of myself as a loser. If I hadn't spent my time brooding about it, I would have won at least one round.”

“Past fifty? You don't look it, I mean . . . you don't.”

“You'd have said I was only fifty?”

“No, I'm sorry, you're a fine man, and you have a sense of humor. Which is a sign of freshness, youth . . .”

“If anything, it's a sign of wisdom, and therefore of old age.”

“No, you obviously don't believe what you're saying, but it's clear you've decided to go along with this venture and you're doing it . . . with cheerful cynicism.”

Cheerful? She was a blend of cheer and melancholy and was watching me with the eyes (how would a bad writer have put it?) of a fawn.

Of a fawn? Ah, well . . . it's just that, as we were walking, she looked up at me because I was taller than she was. And that was it. Any woman who looks at you from below looks like Bambi.

Meanwhile we arrived at her bar. She was sipping her Bellini and I felt relaxed in front of my whiskey. I was gazing once again at a woman who wasn't a prostitute, and I felt younger.

Perhaps it was the alcohol . . . I was beginning to feel the urge to confide. When did I last confide in anyone? I told her I'd once had a wife who had walked out on me. I told her I had won that woman over because, at the beginning, I'd messed something up and apologized, said that perhaps I was stupid. I love you even if you're stupid, she'd told me—things like that can drive you mad with love. But then perhaps she realized I was more stupid than she could handle, and it ended.

Maia laughed. (“What a nice thing to say, I love you even if you're stupid!”) And then she told me that even though she was younger and had never thought of herself as stupid, she too had had some unhappy affairs, perhaps because she couldn't bear the stupidity of the other person, or perhaps because most of those roughly her own age seemed so immature. “As if I were the mature one. And so, you see, I'm almost thirty and still on the shelf. It's just that we're never satisfied with what we have.”

Thirty? In Balzac's time a woman of thirty was old and wrinkled, and Maia seemed like twenty, apart from a few fine lines around the eyes, as if she had done a lot of crying, or was sensitive to the light and always squinted on sunny days.

“There's nothing better,” I said, “than an amiable encounter between two losers,” and as soon as I said it, I felt afraid.

“Fool,” she said lightly, then she apologized, fearing she had been overly familiar.

“No, on the contrary, thank you,” I said. “No one has ever called me fool in such a seductive way.”

I had gone too far. Fortunately, she was quick to change the subject. “They're trying to make it look like Harry's Bar,” she said, “and they can't even get the spirits in the right place. You see, among the various whiskeys there's a Gordon's gin, and the Sapphire and the Tanqueray are on the other side.”

“What, where?” I asked, looking straight ahead, and all I could see was tables. “No,” she said, “at the bar, look.” I turned, and she was right, but how could she have imagined I'd seen what she was looking at? At the time I didn't take much notice, and took the opportunity to call for the check. I gave her a few more words of reassurance as I walked her to a door, from which you could see a courtyard and the workshop of a mattress maker. There were still a few mattress makers left, it seemed, despite the television ads for spring mattresses. She thanked me, she smiled, she offered me her hand. It was warm and appreciative.