Back to Bologna (5 page)

‘Maybe I should sue you, Scheda.’

‘I’m just telling you how it’s going to look if we contest this action. We might–
might
–win the judgement, but Rinaldi will win the PR battle and you’ll come out of it, at considerable cost, looking like a mean-spirited shit.’

‘But you said that he’s insisting on going to court. What can I do about it?’

‘Show up at the Bologna exhibition centre two days from now.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘This is still at the negotiation stage, but I’ve already roughed it out with his personal assistant, a very intelligent woman called Delia Anselmi. She’s totally in agreement and seems to have a lot of influence over Rinaldi. Between the two of us I think we can swing it. But first I need your agreement.’

‘To what?’

‘Taking part in a cookery contest with Rinaldi during the Enogastexpo food fair that’s on there now.’

Edgardo Ugo laughed.

‘You must be mad. Or think I am.’

‘On the contrary, it’s a perfect arrangement for all concerned.’

‘But he’s bound to win!’

‘Of course he is. So you’re going to lose a cook-off with the leading celebrity chef in Italy. If you challenged Roger Federer to a game of tennis you’d lose too. How humiliating is that? There are plenty of other aspects of life where you’re an acknowledged world champion. All you need to do is show up, shake hands with Lo Chef on stage, maybe join him in a duet–can you sing?–and generally make it clear that the whole affair was just a ridiculous mistake that the media have blown up out of all proportion. In return, he will sign a document that I will prepare, renouncing any legal action whatsoever against you now or in the future. End of story.’

Ugo was silent.

‘Plus,’ Scheda added, ‘and this is the beauty part, the whole show will be broadcast live and as part of the deal I’ll arrange for you to have a few minutes solo to camera. There will be multiple repeats later in the day and throughout the weekend. Overall projected viewer numbers are around twenty million.’

‘I’ll do it.’

Ugo put down the phone. All this talk of food made him realise that he’d forgotten to have lunch. He walked downstairs to the gigantic kitchen and peered despondently into the fridge. There were the remains of the dinner to which he’d invited a group of friends and colleagues the previous weekend, all the dishes being prepared communally from Marinetti’s tract on Futurist cooking. As the generous quantity of leftovers indicated, the preparation had been more satisfying than the actual food, but it had all looked very striking and had been beautifully photographed for an article about the event in
La Cucina Italiana
–good publicity for everyone concerned.

He selected a few of the chunks of mortadella and cheese sculpted into letters that had formed part of the dish ‘Edible Words’, from which all the guests were supposed to eat their own names, then walked through to the former housekeeper’s office. This is where he paid his bills, kept his domestic files, and checked his emails. There were very few of the latter today, only twenty-eight new messages. He skimmed through the titles, opening some and deleting others unread. An offer for Lithuanian rights to two of his books, a request from the BBC for him to contribute to a documentary on the cultural significance of professional sport, an invitation to give a series of vapid but very highly-paid lectures in Japan, plus a selection of the usual academic tittle-tattle sent or forwarded by his friends and admirers all over the world.

He clicked open the last unopened email message. The subject header was blank and the ‘From’ box contained only a Hotmail address consisting of a string of apparently random numbers. As for the message itself, there was no text, just a line drawing–an engraving, rather–of a male hand, the thumb and index finger almost joined to form a circle.

Ugo gazed at it for some time, then walked through to his library, located in the former living and reception rooms of the villa, now knocked through to form one vast and tranquil space. Here he opened a drawer in a handsome rosewood cabinet and consulted the well-thumbed handwritten index cards inside. A minute or so later he had located the position of the volume and, having hauled over the wheeled ladder used for accessing the higher of the eight rows of shelves, was leafing through Andrea de Jorio’s classic 1832 text about southern Italian gestures and their origins in classical antiquity.

Yes, there it was: ‘
Disprezzo
’, contempt. Although the tactful Neapolitan cleric had no more than hinted at this, the root significance of the sign was of course blatantly sexual. It was the most powerful non-verbal insult that existed, what de Jorio had termed ‘the superlative form’ of other offensive gestures.

Basically, someone was telling him to fuck off.

9

Barefoot and wearing her raincoat as a dressing gown, Flavia was savouring a cigarette and stirring a pan of sauce when there came a pattern of heavy raps at the door. She went to squint at the caller through the fish-eye lens, getting only a general impression of a hat, dark glasses and a heavy overcoat.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police.’

She took another peek, then unbolted and opened the door. The man flashed a plastic card from his wallet. Flavia made out the word ‘Speranza’ but nothing more.

‘May I come in?’ he asked.

He looked more like a secret policeman than the regular sort, thought Flavia, although such men did not present identification or ask permission to come in. But there was only one reason why the police should be interested in her and the other girls living in those rooms, and that was to effect their immediate deportation under the new immigration laws that had been rushed through to satisfy the xenophobic electorate of various politicians whose support was essential to the survival of the governing coalition.

The intruder stood at the centre of the room, looking about him at the mattresses on the floor, the fruit crates used as cupboards, the pot of pasta sauce simmering on the hotplate, the length of blue nylon cord suspended between two bent nails and serving as a communal wardrobe. In an inversion of its normal function, Flavia wrapped the raincoat tightly about her body, still wet and cold from the primitive shower in the opposite corner.

‘Nice place,’ the man remarked.

This was too obvious a provocation to merit a reply.

‘You sharing?’

Flavia shook her head. There was just a chance of saving the other girls, if she could somehow get word to them before they came home. Didn’t they have to allow you a phone call here in Europe? The man was staring at their meagre possessions, in full view all around. There was still a chance, though, since these added up to less than a quarter of what the average Italian woman would have regarded as the basic minimum.

The policeman took a studio photograph from the inside pocket of his double-breasted coat and showed it to Flavia.

‘You know this person,’ he said.

She recognised Rodolfo’s flatmate immediately, although she had never seen him wearing a jacket and tie, but shook her head again. The intruder replaced the photograph and produced a shiny metal hip flask from which he took a long gurgling drink.

‘Sure you do,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘Name’s Vincenzo. Vincenzo Amadori.’

He swapped the flask for a packet of cigarettes from yet another pocket of his capacious coat.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

She shook her head again.

‘Want one?’

Her instinct was to refuse–tell nothing, take nothing–but a much older superstition reminded her that three denials brought bad luck. The packet was labelled Camels and the cigarette the man lit for her had a pleasant toasty flavour. American imports, she thought inconsequentially. Definitely the secret police. She decided to call him Dragos.

‘Sure you know him,’ the intruder insisted. ‘Number seventy-four Via Marsala, second floor at the back.’

Flavia realised that further evasion was in vain. Clearly she had been followed.

‘I am see him there I think,’ she declared in a laborious chant.

‘Hey, it talks as well!’ Dragos remarked with a jocular leer. ‘Tell me you mix a mean martini, darling, and you’ve got yourself a date. Actually, all you need to do is sit down and cross your legs.’

He looked around hopefully, but chairs were among the many items of furniture the room lacked.

‘You go there to see him?’ Dragos continued. ‘Or is it the other kid?’

‘The other.’

Asharp nod.

‘Smart girl. Strictly between you, me and anyone who may be listening in behind these cardboard walls, our little Prince Vince is bad news.’

‘I already know these. But he is not a prince I think.’

The secret policeman’s attention had seemingly wandered again, this time to the electric hotplate that was the household’s only cooking facility. He walked over and sniffed the simmering sauce appreciatively.

‘Have you ever met any of his friends?’ he remarked in a tone of studied indifference.

‘Of this Vincenzo?’

‘The very same.’

Drago sucked at his cigarette.

‘He’s fallen into bad company, you see. His parents are very worried.’

‘My friend he is not bad company.’

‘Mattioli? No, he’s okay, for a student. But there’s this crew that Amadori hangs out with at football matches. They’re a different story.’

‘These I never see.’

‘Never, eh?’

Dragos picked up a spoon, dipped it into the pasta sauce and slurped down the contents, turning to Flavia with a patronising smirk that was abruptly wiped from his face. He dropped the spoon and clutched his throat, then doubled over and began bawling incoherently.

Flavia ran to the washbasin and filled the toothglass with water, but the sufferer had already grabbed a beaker of colourless fluid from a nearby shelf and downed it in one. The result was a series of piercing shrieks which blasted openings into that wing of the palace which the Princess had ordered to be abandoned and sealed up years before.

‘Merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di…’

It was only after administering a lengthy course of plain yoghurt diluted with lemon juice that Flavia was able to get her visitor into a fit state to leave, which by then was all he showed any desire to do. Unfortunately the interruption left her no time to complete and then eat the late lunch she had been eagerly anticipating before going to work. She was particularly resentful about this since the sauce–despite the unprintable things the secret policeman had said about it–was a personal favourite which she could only prepare on very rare occasions when the necessary ingredient was to hand.

There were few enough things that Flavia missed about her native country, but the relish which formed the basis of this sauce was one. It consisted of sliced red and yellow goatshorn peppers, robustly hot and subtly sweet, steeped in oil with garlic and lemon zest and mysterious spices. The wonderfully intense flavour suffused your entire system for hours afterwards, warming and reinvigorating both flesh and spirit. It was a perfect pick-me-up for this vicious cold spell that had lasted for weeks, and Flavia had been overjoyed when six large and priceless jars emerged from the parcel she had received the day before from the woman who had been her closest friend during their long childhood years in the House of Joy.

But enough water to cook the pasta would take at least twenty minutes to come to the boil on the feeble electric ring, and in half an hour she was due at work. The managerial underling she had to deal with was an obnoxious little tyrant who had already made it abundantly clear that he regarded women like Flavia as expendable casual labour, and that the least infringement of her verbal terms of engagement would result in instant dismissal. So she mopped up as much of the delicious sauce as she could by dunking chunks of day-old bread into it, happily chomping it down. Why on earth the policeman had made such a fuss about the mouthful he’d tasted was utterly beyond her, although the remains of a glass of the homemade plum brandy that Viorica had also sent was probably not the ideal antidote.

Nevertheless, she felt that she had scored a point in some way. By the time he finally left, Dragos had been very tractable, indeed almost tearfully grateful for Flavia’s ministrations, and had insisted on leaving her his phone number with a line about her ‘being well rewarded’ for any information she passed on about Vincenzo Amadori. Flavia would of course never have dreamt of voluntarily telling the police anything about anyone, let alone a person associated, however insignificantly, with Rodolfo, but she definitely felt that she had won that particular encounter, and arrived at the bus stop in the freezing gloom with a light, lively smile on her lips.

10

The subject of Romano Rinaldi’s private life had generated a good deal of speculation, the more so in that next to nothing was known about it. For that matter, he himself barely knew anything definite about his true origins and–as he had explained to his publicist when Lo Chef’s growing fame made it necessary to hire one–what he did know, or suspected, was far too lurid to form a basis for the type of public persona he wished to create.

The publicist had listened to a rambling account of an informal and peripatetic childhood under the tutelage of a number of ‘aunts’, all of whom had originally formed part of the female entourage of a certain Italian pop idol of the 1960s whose star had now faded, but who was still alive and known to be extremely litigious. One by one these guardians had disappeared from the scene, until the last had brought the pubescent Romano with her when she joined a religious cult based in an abandoned complex of troglodytic dwellings out in the wilds somewhere east of Potenza.

At this point the publicist–a smugly jovial man with the air of a retired circus ringmaster–held up his hand.

‘Has anyone from that period ever tried to contact you?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Any family members still living?’

‘None that I know of.’

‘If someone shows up claiming to be related to you, do we have deniability?’

‘Why not? I can’t even prove anything myself.’

The publicist beamed and released a long, lingering sigh.

‘I’ve been waiting all my life for someone like you,’ he said.

An alternative version of the star’s early years had duly been invented, featuring a poor but happy upbringing in working-class Rome, with a classic salt-of-the-earth mother who ruled her numerous brood with a rod of iron but saw them through the hard times, of which needless to say there were many, and above all served up the delicious, nourishing traditional meals that had first awakened the young Romano’s interest in cooking. For a time, an out-of-work actress had been hired to represent this redoubtable personage, but she had threatened to sell her story to a celebrity gossip mag and had had to be bought off and written out of the plot. After that the surrogate family had been kept strictly off-stage, ostensibly to protect the sanctity of Lo Chef’s private life, which was particularly precious to him following his mother’s tragic stroke.

Romano’s actual roots had however left their mark on him, not least in his conviction that the only thing worth achieving was the long-term certainty of short-term pleasure, and that any attempt to analyse or understand life was a complete waste of time. He was therefore unaware of the irony involved in the fact that once the money started rolling in to the point where he could invest in the construction of new apartment blocks, he himself had chosen to live exactly where he had grown up: illegally in a hole in the ground. The owners of properties such as his typically had a phantom
abusivo
dwelling constructed on the roof and classified for rating purposes as a storage facility; Romano had done something similar, but deep underground, and it was in this bunker that he was now planning the opening blitzkreig of his total war against Professor Edgardo Ugo.

To be honest, he was still furious with Delia, although a smidgin or two of the good stuff had phased his anger down from the screaming fit he had treated her to when she originally pitched the idea to him after the recording session that morning. But his core position hadn’t changed one iota, and the sooner she realised this the better. He had no interest in a negotiated solution to Ugo’s scandalous provocation. What he wanted was the arsehole’s arse on a plate, and Delia’s job, as his highly-paid gofer, was to jiggle her brisket cutely under his nose and enquire sweetly if he wanted fries with that, not tell him that he should have ordered something else.

The computer emitted a soft gong-like sound, indicating the arrival of an email. Sensing his mood starting to darken again, Rinaldi quickly snorted another line. Cooking might be problematic for him, but when it came to coking he was a wizard. He crossed the minimalistically furnished expanses of the concrete coffer-dam that had been constructed amid the foundations of the apartment block and glared at the screen.

I can’t take your refusal as absolute, Romano, there’s just too much at stake. This was potentially a great crisis. I’ve turned it into an equally great opportunity. I completely understand your justifiable feelings of hurt, but the fact remains that you’d be a fool not to grab this chance of both clearing your name and garnering positive publicity for the show, the products and the Lo Chef brand name. FWIW, the whole team is in agreement on this.

Rinaldi sat down at the keyboard and fired off his reply.

I don’t do live.

The little bitch was obviously handling this in real time–her own job was on the line, of course, although so far she hadn’t mentioned this–because she came right back at him.

The jury will be rigged. I explained all this to you when we met. I’ve already got five judges signed up and am working on the rest. You will also be informed of the list of ingredients in advance–in fact we can more or less dictate them–and will be intensively coached by Righi as usual. By the time the show goes on stage even you will be able to whip up an acceptable pasta dish within the time limit. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. For God’s sake think about it.

He let the coke reply to this one.

There’s nothing to think about. Where I grew up, down in the streets, among people who had nothing but their pride, we had a saying. ‘If you lose your money, nothing is lost. If you lose your health, much is lost. If you lose your honour, all is lost.’ This arrogant bastard has impugned my honour. He shall pay for that.

Romano clicked this off and then fiddled around until he had programmed the stress-reducing ‘Pure White Noise’ audio file. Barely had the unvarying swishing pervaded the room than the computer gonged again. Rinaldi was tempted to ignore it, but he knew that this issue had to be resolved, and far better by email than in person.

Fine, go right ahead. FYI, our legal consultant has advised us that our chances of winning a court case are at best fifty-fifty. Technically speaking, Ugo did not libel you. His comments were simply a ‘hypothetical illustrative example’ designed to sex up one of his the-way-we-live-now pieces. But if you sue, he will hire the very best lawyers in the country and quite possibly a few muckraking hacks to dig around and see what they can come up with. Disgruntled former employees, etc. Remember little Placida, who turned out not to be? It could get really nasty. At best we’ll win a ‘moral victory’ that no one will care about, which will cost a fortune in fees and still leave everyone wondering whether you can actually cook or not. But once you have demonstrated your skills and superiority live on TV at the Bologna food fair–and don’t forget that the contest is sewn up in your favour whatever happens in the kitchen–then the prospects for your future career are assured, not just here in Italy but world-wide. Professor Ugo may be an arrogant bastard, but he is also a huge international personality. Out-takes from this event are going to be shown on hundreds of foreign channels, maybe thousands. You know those little feel-good stories they stick in at the end of the news after the politics and wars and atrocities? ‘And now, on a lighter note…’ You’re going to own that slot, Romano. I personally guarantee you that if you accept the opportunity that I’ve set up then by the end of the year Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta will be global, and all the spin-off branded products along with it. We’re talking potentially millions. And one more thing, for what it may be worth. If you pigheadedly insist on going to court despite all the above, consider me fired.

Feeling his resolution beginning to weaken, Rinaldi sidled over to the modest kitchenette, where he occasionally warmed up a cup of instant soup or burnt a defrosted slice of bread under the grill, and snapped open a bottle of Coke. He well remembered the days before his current success, when he had eked out an exiguous livelihood voicing jingles for advertisements to be aired on local radio stations. It had been a studio director for one of these who had come up with the original idea for the Lo Chef show, and originally it had been intended as little more than a joke. But the director had contacts at various television production companies, and after a few embellishments, such as the singing, had been added to the pitch, one of these had agreed to make a pilot at a discounted fee refundable if they could find a broadcaster willing to take it on.

They had, and the ratings had been good enough for the TV station to come back for a mini-series of six episodes. Ratings had climbed by leaps and bounds with each screening–all word of mouth–and Rinaldi got a contract to do a full series for the rest of the year. When that expired, he was in a position to negotiate a very much more lucrative contract with the nation’s most-watched channel, plus a prime-time slot right after the smash hit
Filthy Rich Stupid Sluts
reality show. At first the friend involved had run the production company, but the momentum of the product had soon exhausted his meagre skills and Romano Rinaldi had reluctantly been forced to dispense with his services.

Like all ideas of genius, this one was basically very simple. Italian cooking was dying. Not at the restaurant level, but in the home. Men had never dreamt of learning how to cook, and nowadays most women were too tired and preoccupied to do so. In any case, they wouldn’t know how. The oral tradition that had passed down recipes and techniques from mother to daughter for countless centuries had virtually died out, along with the extended family and stay-at-home wives.

Hence Lo Chef’s appeal. His warm, unthreatening, campily flirty screen persona tapped deeply into his viewership’s culinarily challenged subconscious, allaying its anxieties and sense of inadequacy while validating its dream and aspirations. The popularity of his show was not based on educating the younger generation in the basics of putting food on the table, although the scriptwriters were constantly reminded that their target audience included people who thought that milk came fresh from the cow at 5°C, and even those who had never realised that cows were involved at all. But Lo Chef’s viewers didn’t want instruction, they wanted glamour, a few ‘authentic’ tips from the top, and above all a bit of fun.

This was where the singing came in. Sections of the recipe, directions, ingredients, preparation methods all floated out in Rinaldi’s very serviceable light tenor–another link to his childhood, and possibly even his parentage–to the melodies of famous operas and popular songs. Everyone relaxed and smiled as the chubby, lovable TV personality whipped up another stunning, authentic dish ‘from our incomparable and timeless gastronomic tradition’, accompanied by two scantily clad, inanely grinning bimbettes with pneumatic boobs who got the male audience on board while giving the average housewife the satisfaction of jeering at their utter incompetence, for which they were always being indulgently scolded by the star, his eyes raised to heaven.

It had been a dynamite concept, and one he had managed carefully. By now he was less interested in direct revenue from the TV station than in exposure for the ever-expanding line of products marketed under the
Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta
trademark. This was the sweetest aspect of the whole enterprise, since it required no effort on Rinaldi’s part whatsoever. Even initially, all he had had to do was to find a reasonably good product available at a knockdown wholesale price, then contact the producer and make a bid for exclusive retail rights. Now, of course, the producers contacted him. He was deluged with offers. Then it was just a matter of hiring some marketing hack to write a lyrical blurb to print on the label beneath a cheery image of the star in his white coat and chef’s hat, his hand held out and mouth open as he reached for a high C, and ship it out to the supermarkets.

He had started with the Coop chain that controlled most mass food outlets in central Italy, then moved on to Conad and the other national chains. He knew just how women felt as they trudged up and down the aisles in those smelly, crowded food marts. They longed for the personal contact and preferential treatment they got at the small, old-fashioned shops, but doing the rounds of all those was just too much of a bother after a hard day at work. The supermarkets were quick, convenient and cheap, but they felt chilly and impersonal. So when Signora Tizia spotted Romano’s cheerful, friendly features on the distinctive red and yellow label, she reached for it as if he had been holding her arm. No need for expensive hitor-miss advertising either. The shelves of the studio where he recorded his show were stacked with those very same products, all with the labels turned outwards and sporting the Lo Chef logo that was also back-projected on the false rear wall of the set. And whenever a new product was introduced to the range, Rinaldi would extol its virtues in an extended aria based on the rhapsodic publicity gush.

He took another swig of Coke, then headed back to the glass-topped table. He knew he was overdoing it, but he had a tough decision to make. Quite some time passed before he realised that he had in fact made it, and he reached for the phone.

‘All right, I’ll do it.’

There was an audible intake of breath at the other end.

‘That’s wonderful, Romano! You’ve absolutely made the correct decision. But time is pressing. You need to come to Bologna this evening, okay? As in right now. I’ll arrange a car and book a hotel and email you the details ASAP. And once again, congratulations!’