My Mother-in-Law Drinks (21 page)

Deep down, we understand each other, this guy and me.

“You know what really mystifies me about you?” I resume. “The way you manage to bring together a total lack of good taste with an obsessive pursuit of that touch of class. Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror with that jacket?”

And she even takes a look at it. As if she didn't remember which jacket she was wearing.

At this point little seedbeds of laughter start to spring up around the entrance (there's one—super-contagious—who sounds like a seal).

The great part is this is all going out live.

“You look like an old Fiat 128. My grandpa had one that was that exact same color.”

After rounding out the idea, I pause and look around, waiting to enjoy the fruits of my performance.

The hyenas begin cackling unrestrainedly. The seal gets to work too, making converts along the way. Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo presses his hands against his face, doing his best to silence a burst of convulsive laughter, but it overflows laterally, turning into ridiculous snorts, sobs, and groans. Matteo the deli counterman puts on an empty smile, the kind that means you didn't get the punch line. Mulder and Scully turn beet red in their effort not to piss their pants laughing. Even Matrix emerges from standby mode, raises his head, looks at the monitor to verify the similarity between the color of the jacket and a Fiat 128, and then abandons himself to a series of labial firecracker pops, which seems like a watered-down version of the belly laugh he'd no doubt have let loose if he didn't have much more serious problems to worry about.

At this point I believe that Mary is coming dangerously close to having a stroke. In the meantime she presents a striated version of her face to the live broadcast, accompanied by a faint tremor of her jaw.

If you want to get some idea of the level of self-satisfied ecstasy I'm experiencing right now, try to think back, if you've seen the movie, to the scene in
Witness
where Harrison Ford (who's playing a cop, and a pretty rough-and-ready one, who infiltrates an Amish community to escape certain crooked colleagues of his who'd like to take him out) breaks the nose of this asshole who's been mocking his Amish friends for a good five minutes, counting on the fact that the Amish never react to provocation.

True of the Amish; not true of Harrison Ford undercover.

Especially if you go right up close to him and make faces.

“And don't grind your teeth,” I dig in, “since it's clear you have problems with your dentures. How would it look if they popped out on live TV?”

Laughter breaks out again, in a crescendo of raucous coarseness fueled by the sheer gusto of cruelty. One hooligan shows off a piercing whistle that would have done honor to a goatherd. On one monitor I see a thumb jabbing skyward repeatedly as if to say: “Way to go!”

I think of all the people watching at home, who knows how many there are, watching us live, of all the years they've waited for this moment, and I'm practically moved to tears.

This one's for you, boys.

“Who are you, how dare you?” the poor woman finally counters.

“Boooo!” the hyenas comment in chorus.

I may have also heard an: “Aw, go fuck yourself,” but that may just be wish fulfillment on my part.

“What do you mean, who am I?” I reply, disappointed to find myself so quickly defrauded of my identity as an alleged terrorist.

I'm on the verge of adding a little something extra (like, say: “My God, Mary, can't we even rely on the bullshit you spew out anymore?”), when unexpectedly Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo breaks in, in an exceedingly calm tone of voice, instantly dousing the brushfire of excitement.

“You're a cretin,” he launches in Mary Stracqua's direction.

She retreats into her shoulders so abruptly that her neck practically disappears.

“Hey,” I say, looking at Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo.

Which stands for: “You took your sweet time.”

We all shift our attention to our leader, in unison, waiting for what comes next. Which, in fact, comes next.

“Do you realize that that's a microphone you have in your hand? That you're actually speaking on live television? That the people who are listening to you will take seriously the false and above all completely baseless news you've just reported?”

Jesus, boys. This must be Judgment Day.

“I thought you were just a comedian, a sketch artist, and in a sense I even found your imitation of the Italian language droll. But now I see you're a genuine con artist, a dangerous ignorant fool. What were they thinking when they gave you a press card?”

“That's right, go fuck yourself!” a loyal hyena shouts in solidarity.

“You asshole!” another hyena adds. But it's not clear who he's yelling at.

Whereupon Mulder and Scully lunge into the fray, arms outstretched, to prevent a riot.

The poor woman tries to launch an indignant counterattack.

“Listen here, I won't permit you . . .”

“Shut your mouth,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo promptly annihilates her with an abrupt, masterly transition to a disrespectful use of the “
tu
” form. “You don't give orders,” he goes on, switching back to the “
Lei
” form. “You don't even understand what's going on in here and yet you act all hurt: learn your profession, you utter donkey.”

“Waaah!” one hyena howls.

“Outstanding!” shouts another.

Then they start clapping their hands (some stamping their feet as well), laughing, and shouting filthy words without subject or predicate.

Scully and Mulder don't know whether they should feel embarrassed or join in the laughter with the rest. Matteo the deli counterman sports a happy face of Satisfaction Obtained (on this occasion I learn that contentment too can cause blushing).

As for me, I have to summon every ounce of my self-control to keep from punching the air in joy.

“Captain,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo calls out, in a tone of voice that seems intended to reestablish the level of drama that the situation had attained before the arrival of this charlatan.

In fact the hyenas, eager for fresh carrion as they are, immediately pipe down.

“What,” he replies.

“Would you please take the microphone away from her?”

Mary stares at Mulder, scandalized, as if to say: “You're not dreaming of obeying him, are you?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo asks, seeing as Mulder is just standing there, conducting an ocular consultation with Scully.

“Don't you dare,” Mary Stracqua says, trying to intimidate him.

“Captain,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo resumes. Calmly, unruffled. “That cretin has already done enough damage.” He snaps off the safety, aims his gun at Matrix, and reiterates the concept: “Take that microphone away from her. Immediately. I'm not going to tell you again.”

We all stand motionless, petrified.

Even the hyenas seem to huddle together.

Matrix grinds his teeth.

Mulder takes a step toward Mary Stracqua and holds out his hand.

She looks him in the eyes, hesitates, then slowly hands him the—and this is what technicians call it because of its shape—ice-cream cone, with a pained sequence of broken gestures, like Clint Eastwood tossing away his pistol in compliance with the orders of the bank robber du jour, who just threatened to murder the hostage (usually a woman, preferably a blonde) unless Clint does as instructed.

An intolerable scene.

I can't stand watching it any longer.

“Just give him that fucking microphone!” I finally blurt out in exasperation.

I catch her so completely off-guard that the poor woman practically capsizes, leaping up awkwardly and making one of the hyenas guffaw. The ice-cream cone flies out of her hand. Mulder lunges and catches it in midair, keeping it from crashing to the floor.

There follow machine-gun bursts of laughter. Mary turns angrily toward Hyena Central—which has by now developed an insatiable appetite for mocking her—but all she's met with is a chorus of: “What the fuck are
you
looking at?”

Mulder gets back to his feet, bright red from the unplanned rescue operation and furious with Mary Stracqua for having indirectly made him part of her foolishness (it's typical of foolishness to extend its effects to everyone who happens to be in the vicinity, even if they've done nothing to deserve the embarrassment and have in fact gesticulated wildly to mitigate its effects).

Continuing to look the mental defective in the eye and counting to ten to suppress the homicidal impulse surging through him, Mulder, with all the nonchalance of a surgeon in the OR, hands the ice-cream cone over to his colleague.

Scully takes it with some bafflement, as if to say: “And what am I supposed to do with this?” Then she hands it to the cameraman, who grabs it one-handed, turns it off, and stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans, while with the other hand he holds the video camera in place between his shoulder and his neck.

“Now, please, put down the gun, Engineer,” says Mulder to the monitor.

“
Engineer?
” Mary Stracqua repeats, flabbergasted.

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo snaps his pistol's safety back on and sticks it into his belt.

“Now what?” asks Mulder.

“Now nothing, Captain. I have no need of moderators, much less incompetent ones. All I need is for the cameraman to aim his video camera at the monitors and film everything that happens. Nothing more.”

Mary Stracqua attempts a soundless objection, but Mulder isn't putting up with anything else from her: he places the palm of his right hand a couple of inches from her face and with his left hand grabs her by the elbow, pulling her to his side and holding her still, determined to keep her from causing any more damage, like an elementary-school teacher with the worst-behaved students.

For the cameraman, the fact that Mary Stracqua has been silenced is manna from heaven, hoped for but unlooked to for who knows how long: it seems to have put a bounce in his step, such is the ease, if not the gracefulness, with which he finally conducts his camerawork, moving here and there, dropping to his knees and standing up again, shooting sections of the supermarket, patches of crowd and grimacing hyena faces, and then focusing directly on one of the closed-circuit monitors.

“My name is Romolo Sesti Orfeo,” says the engineer, looking straight into the camera, “and I'm a computer engineer. I'm the one who designed the video security system for this supermarket, and I'm the one who organized the hostage taking you're watching right now.”

He speaks without hesitation, with the calm, unhurried tone of someone who knows exactly what they want to say and takes all the time necessary to say it; and yet—and this is really an odd impression, like when you're about to choke back a tear but you're not sure why—it's as if his voice had aged a little bit. As if the weight of the topic had forced it down an octave.

“Let me begin by begging the pardon of those who know me and especially of those who love me, because I know that I'm not appearing here at my very best. For that matter, I myself never would have believed I'd come to this point. I've always been a peaceful man, a father and a husband, a hard worker. I had a simple life; I expected normal things from it. I had a son. Until one day”—and here he turns to look at Matrix, pointing his finger straight at him—“this man came and took my son away from me.”

Matrix lifts his eyes to look at him, and in this moment it's as if my mind resets itself, a fortuitous and completely automatic reanimation of facts that were destined to be forgotten—and suddenly I see everything. I see the headlines from that day, the few columns of newsprint I read, possibly while waiting outside a clerk of court's office.

Massimiliano Sesti.

The newspapers must have shortened the surname when they reported on the murder. They'd killed him along with a friend outside a pastry shop at dawn. A Camorra execution in the classic style, carried out with exemplary ferocity. The only problem was that Massimiliano Sesti's criminal record was spotless, unlike that of his friend, who'd had one minor run-in with the law for drug possession. A minor infraction, but enough to shroud both deaths in an intolerable ambiguity.

Even a hack reporter, with the life stories of both victims in hand, would have come to the conclusion that this was a case of mistaken identity. Two young men out roaming the city after a night of club hopping, with an unfortunate resemblance to the killers' intended targets. But when the Camorra kills so openly, people tend not to bother delving very deeply. The collective memory is uninterested in making the effort to believe in innocent victims. Deaths like these don't elicit pity, or even indignation. They're just never mentioned again, fundamentally because there's always a tinge of suspicion.

So this is the purpose of the live show: to remove the mark of infamy from the reputation of a murdered son.

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo starts telling his story. He reports the details of the slaughter; he accuses the mob boss by his first and last name; he shows that he knows a great deal about him, offering a brief summary of his criminal biography, and then identifying him as the one who ordered the death squad out that night. Every time he says his son's name, his voice cracks, and each time with effort he picks it up, reassembles it, glues it together as best he can, and continues.

And as he proceeds with his heartbreaking closing argument, I'd like to tell him that I know this story, that all a person had to do was to read that one column to know that his son had nothing to do with it.

Read it, that's all.

I should tell him not to bother, as far as I'm concerned.

That I already know. I have proof.

I don't need a trial.

Instead I remain silent, like everyone else, and I let him speak.