Let the Games Begin. Niccolo Ammaniti
wants to talk to you . . . As soon as you finish, would you mind going to him?’
‘Now! I'll come now!’ he answered her. And as if he'd been summoned by the Holy Ghost himself, he stood up and said to those fans who still hadn't received their certificate of participation: ‘Sawhney needs to talk to me. Please, let me go.’
At the drinks table he sank two glasses of whisky one after the other, and felt better. Now that the alcohol was in his body, he could face the Nobel Prize winner.
Leo Malagò came over to him with his tail wagging happily like a dog who's just been given a wild-boar pâté bruschetta.
‘You legend! You knocked them all out with that little tale about the fire. I wonder how you come up with such ideas. Now Fabrizio, though, please don't get drunk. We have to go to dinner afterwards.’ He folded his arm through Fabrizio's. ‘I had a look at the book sales. Guess how many copies you sold this evening?’
‘How many?’ He couldn't help answering. It was an automatic reflex.
‘Ninety-two! And you know how many Sawhney sold? Nine! You don't know how pissed off Angiò is.’ Massimo Angiò was the foreign-fiction editor. ‘I love seeing him so pissed off! And tomorrow you'll be splashed across the papers. By the way, how fucking hot is his translator?’ Malagò’s face relaxed. The look in his eyes suddenly softened. ‘Imagine what it would be like to fuck her . . .’
Fabrizio, instead, had lost all interest in the woman. His mood was dropping like a thermometer in a cold snap. What did the Indian want from him?! To tell him off for the crap he had shot off? He plucked up his nerve.
‘Excuse me a moment.’
He could see him in a corner. He was sitting opposite the window and was watching the tree branches scrape the yellow skyline of Rome. His black hair shone under the light of the chandeliers.
Fabrizio drew near carefully. ‘I beg your pardon . . .’
The old Indian turned around, saw him and smiled, showing off a set of teeth too perfect to be real.
‘Please, take a seat.’
Fabrizio felt like a child who'd been sent for by the headmaster.
‘How's it going?’ Fabrizio asked in his high-school English, as he sat down opposite Sawhney.
‘Well, thank you.’ Then the Indian thought again. ‘To tell you the truth, I'm a little tired. I can't sleep. I suffer from insomnia.’
‘I don't, luckily.’ Fabrizio realised that he had nothing to say to the man.
‘I read your book. A little hastily, on the aeroplane, I do beg your pardon . . .’
Fabrizio coughed out a suffocated ‘And?’ He was about to hear the verdict of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of the most important writers in the world. The man who had the best press reviews of anyone in the last ten years. A part of Fabrizio's brain wondered whether he really wanted to hear it.
I bet he hated it.
‘I liked it. A lot.’
Fabrizio Ciba felt a shot of well-being float through his body. A sensation like what a drug addict feels when he injects himself with good-quality heroin. A sort of beneficial heat that made the back of his neck tingle, slid down across his jaw, shut his eyes, slipped between his gums and his teeth, went down his trachea, it spread out pleasantly boiling hot like Vicks VapoRub from his sternum to his spine, through his ribs, and skipped from one vertebra to another until it reached his pelvis. His sphincter tensed briefly and goosebumps shot up his arms. A warm shower without getting wet. Better than that. A massage without being touched. While this physiological reaction – which lasted a few seconds – took place, Fabrizio was blind and deaf, and when he snapped back to reality Sawhney was talking.
‘ . . . places, facts and people are unaware of the force that wipes them away. Don't you agree?’
‘Yes, certainly.’ He answered. He hadn't heard anything at all. ‘Thank you. You've made me happy.’
‘You definitely know how to keep the reader interested, how to move the best chords of your sensitivity. I would like to read something you've written that's a bit longer.’
‘The Lion's Den is my longest work. I've recently . . .’ – it was actually five years ago – ‘ . . . published another novel, Nestor's Dream, but that is also quite short.’
‘How come you don't venture further? You most certainly have the expressiveness to do so. Don't be scared. Let yourself go without fear. If I may give you a piece of advice, don't hold yourself back, let yourself be taken by the story.’
Fabrizio had to stop himself from hugging that dear adorable old man. How true what he had said was. Fabrizio knew he was capable of writing THE GREAT NOVEL. What's more, THE GREAT ITALIAN NOVEL, like I promessi sposi to be exact, the book the critics said was missing in our contemporary literature. And after various attempts, he had begun work on a saga about a Sardinian family, from the seventeenth century until the present day. An ambitious project that was definitely much stronger than the Gattopardo or I Viceré.
Fabrizio was about to tell Sawhney all this, but a little humility held him back. He felt obliged to return the compliments. So he began inventing: ‘I wanted to tell you that your novel had me literally inspired. It is an extraordinarily organic novel and the plot is so intense . . . How do you do it? What is your secret? It has a dramatic energy that left me shaken for weeks. The reader is not only called on to weigh the consciousness and innocence of these powerful female characters, but, through their stories, how can I say it . . .? Yes, the reader is forced to transfer your point of view from the pages of the book to his own reality.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Indian. ‘How nice to pay each other compliments.’
The two writers burst out laughing.
9
The leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon was seated at the kitchen table hoeing into a plate of lasagne floating in a lake of reheated Béchamel sauce. It made him feel nauseous, but he had to pretend he hadn't eaten.
Serena, sitting with her feet up against the dishwasher, was painting her nails. As always, she hadn't waited for him for dinner. The television on the Formica worktop was showing Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Saverio's favourite programme after Mysteries on RAI Tre. But the Wilde Beasts’ leader's mind was far away. He kept thinking back to the phone call with Kurtz Minetti.
I am such a legend. He cleaned his mouth with the serviette. What did I say again? No. I'm not interested. Could he think of any Satanist on the circuit who would have had the guts to turn down an offer to become the manager of Central Italy for the Children of the Apocalypse? He felt like calling Murder to tell him about how he had told Kurtz to fuck off, but Serena might have overheard him, and then he also didn't want them to find out what that shithead Kurtz thought about the WBA. They'd be offended.
He was surprised at how powerfully and confidently he had pronounced that no. He couldn't help himself from pronouncing it again: ‘No!’
‘No what?’ Serena asked, without lifting her gaze from the fingernails she was painting red.
‘Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking . . .’
Saverio felt an urge to tell his wife all about it, but he held back. If she found out that he was the leader of a Satanic sect, the least she would do is file for divorce.
But that no might be the beginning of an existential turning-point. It was a no that would inevitably lead to an avalanche of no's that it was time to enounce. No to working on the weekends. No to having to babysit. No to him always having to take the rubbish out.
‘There's left-over turkey from yesterday. Heat it up in the microwave.’
Serena was standing up and waving her hands.