“No, not for the moment. But we’ll have to see if the judge accepts the appeal.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t… you’ll have to pay.”
“But I thought we just had to appeal…”
“That does work sometimes—what are you having?” The Lawyer had signalled to the young man behind the counter to come and take their order, and the young man had arrived in no time at all.
“A decaf coffee in a glass… How so?”
“Because… A small glass of prosecco for me, please.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Why? Is there an hour for drinking prosecco?”
“Go on with what you were saying.”
“No, I was saying that sometimes it’s enough to appeal and the justice of the peace—”
“You did say in a glass?”
“Yes, thanks.”
The young man had left them alone.
“Why do you take your coffee in a glass?”
“Because that’s how I like it. Go on.”
“So in theory the justice of the peace would be obliged…” The Lawyer had taken a mobile from his pocket and was looking at it vibrate. “I’m sorry, I have to take this… My dear fellow!”
The Lawyer had got up from the table and moved to an area of the bar where there was a better signal. He gesticulated a great deal as he conferred with his mystery caller, then returned to the table just as the young man was arriving with the coffee and the prosecco.
“I’m sorry, it was an important matter.”
“Are you going to get to the end of your sentence?”
“OK, if the justice of the peace doesn’t summon you within a certain length of time—”
“How long’s a certain length?”
“I don’t remember, I have to check in the office… How many?” asked The Lawyer, having already poured two spoonfuls of sugar into The Master’s decaffeinated coffee.
“I usually take it without. Usually.”
“Quite right, too. Too much sugar is bad for you.”
“Anyway, what the hell happens if he doesn’t summon you?”
The Lawyer had already drunk the prosecco and was draining the bottom of the glass. The Master watched him irritably.
“We win the appeal and you don’t have to pay the fines!”
Fines. Even though he had sold the car years before, The Master was still being pursued over the fines he owed. Old fines, lost fines, fines never withdrawn, never paid, or paid but without keeping the receipts, fines that had slumbered for years in the dusty files of some office, like bacteria surviving under ice, only to then proliferate and spread until they infected him, just when The Master thought he was immune. That was why he had got himself a lawyer, a good one. “He helped me win my appeal against the admissions procedure at Rome University,” the intern from The Small Publishing Company had told him.
“Listen, I have to go, I have to be in the office in half an hour…”
The Lawyer had stood up, gathered his leather briefcase and put on his cream-coloured jacket.
“Before I forget, that’s thirty-seven euros for expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“Administrative costs. Lodging an appeal used to be free. Now you have to pay. They do it to discourage appeals.”
The Master had thirty-five euros in his wallet, and knew he had no coins in his pockets, but he had to perform the act of searching for them anyway. The Lawyer was a man of the world, and knew certain things, too.
“Thirty-five will do.”
“Come in, come in, sit down…”
It was The Publisher who had spoken. He was sitting at a futuristic glass table in the conference room on the top floor of the publishing company’s offices. Also at the table were the press officer, an androgynous woman with angular cheekbones and the husky voice of an inveterate smoker, the designer, a bald man with elusive features and of indeterminate age, and his editor,
a small, cultivated man who despised writers almost as much as he despised himself for not having become one. The Writer smiled stiffly, took two steps across the carpet towards the table, but remained standing. The Publisher noticed his hesitation.
“Leave us alone.”
“No, why—”
“We’ve finished anyway,” he said, dismissing his colleagues with a glance. They gathered their papers, stood up from the leather and metal chairs, and left the room one after the other, smiling politely as they paraded in front of The Writer.
When they had all gone, The Publisher also stood up.
“Let’s go to my office.”
The Publisher left the room and The Writer followed him.
“They’re a bunch of incompetents,” he said out loud as they walked down the corridor. On either side, behind glass doors with small plates on them—
VARIOUS
,
FOREIGN
,
ITALIAN
—employees could be glimpsed bent over voluminous files or half-hidden behind their computers.
“Do you know what one of my recurring dreams is?”
“…”
“I dream that I come in here with a can of petrol and set fire to everything.”
“…”
They turned at the end of the corridor.
“A bonfire of all the paper in here. A huge bonfire of proofs, manuscripts, contracts and bills. Seen from a satellite, it would look as if someone had lit a birthday candle over the city.”
The Publisher could not suppress his excitement at the thought.
“Come, we’ll be quieter in here.”
They went through a door with a plate that led to a room decorated with paintings and rugs, at the end of which stood a massive desk cluttered with papers.
“And you know why I don’t do it?”
“Do what?”
“Set fire to the place.” The Publisher closed the door, walked to the desk and sank into the armchair.
The Writer shook his head.
“Because I don’t have the guts. I’d pay someone to do it for me… Would you like to do it? Do you feel up to it?”
Even though the question was obviously a rhetorical one, The Writer wondered for a moment if he was expected to answer it.
“What are you doing standing there? Sit down.”
As he said this, he indicated an uncomfortable chair with a steel frame and a leather seat facing the desk. The Writer obeyed. Only then did he become aware of the silence in the room, an artificial silence, as if all the sounds had been sucked out of it for an experiment.
“We’re behind.”
“It’s so quiet.”
“What?”
“In here. It’s too quiet.”
“Acoustic panels.”
“What?”
“Do you see that?”
The Publisher pointed to a strange coloured board
hanging
on the wall, which The Writer had taken for a piece of abstract art.
“It’s an acoustic panel. It absorbs all the sounds in the room.”
“Get away!”
“If you like it, I can get you one.”
“When?”
“Later. Now listen to me. Do you or don’t you realize that we’re behind?”
“Oh.”
“A hundred and thirty-five votes, we can’t seem to budge from that.”
“Are you sure you’ve called everyone? Isn’t there anyone you’ve forgotten?”
“The press officer is never off the phone, we’ve raked through our diaries, done recalls, those are the votes we have. It’s because, compared with last year, at least a dozen are gone.”
“How do you mean, gone?”
“Dead.”
“…”
“That’s the real problem. Otherwise it’d be perfect. We’d win every year.”
“Why do you say perfect? They’ve been talking about renewal for years, a change among the voters wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“What do you mean, a change! You really don’t get it, do you? The older they are, the better. What little time they have left isn’t enough to read all the books in the competition. So they have to choose: read or live. They can’t do both. That’s why they have to trust what we tell them.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They have to. Obviously, they want something in return. But they make do with not very much.”
“…”
“Every voter who dies is a ballot paper up in flames. One vote less for us. The younger voters aren’t so easily persuaded. A change would be a real disaster.”
“I’m sorry, we’re always complaining that this country is in the hands of the old, and when the young arrive—”
“As if being ‘young’ was something praiseworthy in itself. What does it take to be young? Who wouldn’t like to be young? Wouldn’t you like to be young again?”
“Excuse me, I’m not old.”
“It takes courage to be old. To climb to the top floor of a building when the lift has broken down just to hand over a ballot paper, queue for ten minutes to grab a sandwich, skip an
afternoon nap to sit through some dreary presentation, those people are real heroes.”
“Well, if you put it like that…”
“It’s not how I put it. It’s the way it is. The young,
your
young”—The Publisher paused here, and filled the pause with a mocking smile—“are the people who aren’t voting for you. They think your book’s an embarrassment. They’re voting for The Beginner.”
“…”
“There’s no use your making that face at me. That’s how things are. They’ve done a good job with The Beginner. They’ve had him park his arse on the right sofas, on TV and in drawing rooms, they’ve stuck him on the covers of women’s magazines. He isn’t very intelligent but it’s not vital for him to be intelligent—on the contrary. He’s polite, good-looking, blue eyes, women have a soft spot for him.”
“I don’t think he’s that good-looking, he has a stupid face.”
“We’re not going to beat him.”
“Think of something!”
“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear. We’ve done everything we were supposed to. Now it’s up to
you
to think of something.”
“Me?”
“…”
“What am I supposed to come up with?”
“Well…”
The Publisher stood up and slipped behind the desk. The Writer twisted his neck to keep him within his field of vision. The Publisher walked to a wooden door built into the wall and opened it. Behind one leaf was a battery of bottles, while the other concealed a small modern fridge, like a hotel minibar.
“Nothing for me, thanks.”
The Publisher had taken something from the refrigerator, something small which The Writer hadn’t been able to see.
“What’s that?”
“An egg.”
Holding the egg between his thumb and index finger, The Publisher shook his head, went slowly back behind his desk and sat down again. The Writer smiled, like someone who believes he’s understood everything.
“What better to get rid of a hangover than an egg… eh?”
But The Publisher ignored The Writer’s words, and continued to gaze at his egg as if it were a diamond.
“This isn’t an egg. It’s a book. And all of you”—there was pride in his voice—“are my hens.”
He delicately put down the egg, which oscillated and then righted itself on the shiny surface of the desk. The Publisher picked up a metal paper clip, bent it and twisted it until it was a kind of stiletto.
“Watch very carefully,” he said, taking the egg in his hand. “What am I now?”
“A farmer?”
“A reader. I’m holding the book, I’m a reader.”
He slowly sank the point of the paper clip into the shell, making a tiny hole. Then he lifted the egg to his lips and sucked greedily. The Writer watched him in disgust. The Publisher moved his lips, shiny and dripping with fresh albumen, away from the egg and smiled at The Writer. Then he flung away the empty shell, which landed in a bin beneath the desk, making the noise of a paper ball.
“What did I do?”
“You had breakfast.”
“No. I read a book.”
“And what was it like?”
“Good.”
“…”
“You know what the eggs you bring me are like?”
“…”
“I’ll tell you. Rotten. They’re rotten.”
“…”
“And I can’t take rotten eggs to market.”
“But they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of copies!”
“Precisely. We’ve poisoned hundreds of thousands of people.”
“…”
“And now we have to reassure these people before they bring a class action against us. They can eat rotten food for months, maybe years, because they have very powerful gastric juices, they’re like hyenas. But when they realize that you’ve poisoned them, they may warn the rest of the pack to stop eating. And we don’t want that to happen, do we? So we need a certificate of quality, something that guarantees the provenance and origin of the product.”
The Writer was nodding mechanically.
“Good. I see we’re starting to think properly. That’s why, seeing that the last egg you brought me was rotten, we must at least put a sticker on it that says it’s fresh. And that sticker is The Prize.”
“But how are we going to win? You just told me there’s no way we can.”
“I didn’t say there’s no way. I said ‘there’s only one way’.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s time we talked man to man,” The Publisher said, leaning forward threateningly and putting his elbows on the desk. “What are you willing to do?”
After the five-a-side match, The Beginner ran to the station and was just in time to catch a train for the small provincial town where there was to be an event that night. The umpteenth blind date his publisher had arranged for him.
In the foyer of the hotel, there is a green velvet sofa that looks
like a mushroom grown during the night. On that sofa The Beginner, in order to hand over his documents and sign the privacy form, threw his light, functional rucksack, the kind a young explorer would carry. The dusty smell of the curtains, the burnished brass, the wallpaper swollen by damp—everything was sweet and familiar to him in this decadent place.
He was given the keys of his room by the concierge and grasped the cold brass of the heavy keyholder in the palm of his hand.
“Maybe you want to freshen up or rest a bit, you must be tired from the journey…” the organizers said to him as they escorted him down the padded corridors, as if he had just been given a life sentence. Yes, a life sentence, because he’s realized that this is how his life will be from now on. He has signed a confession and registered the sentence with a single unconsidered gesture: putting his signature to that wretched novel. From now on, if only he has enough faith and strength, this will be his life. The most difficult part, making a hole in the ice, is over. All he has to do now is start fishing. The fish will come. It all depends on him.