My Mother-in-Law Drinks (40 page)

At concerts the practice of self-discounting still continued, but there was no mistaking the fact that by now, after the most violent and criminal elements had been pounding on the gates and doors of stadiums and theaters to be let in, nobody really cared that there was a slice of the public that did their talking with their fists, using tough manners to impose an antagonistic vision of popular art.

The message of self-discounting, practically from one morning to later that same day, had lost all its critical value and had become, paradoxically and unconsciously, a demand for things to be free, for no reason other than self-interest. The ones who continued to practice it with the mindset of the political action, once they'd burst into the stadium or theater, realized that the audience didn't give a clenched fist about the fact that they'd gained free admission after the show had started (“Okay,” the audience in the concert seating seemed to say, “they let you in for free? Now be good and let us watch the show”).

The musicians would only stop playing long enough to leave the now-obsolete radicals enough time to get comfortable and then they'd start playing again, as if they'd stopped for station identification and a word from the sponsors. It was the most depressing thing, a loss of meaning, live, that gave you an unsettling hunch about the tragic drift that was going to characterize the continuing deterioration already under way.

I remember once, at a concert by the band AreA—Demetrio Stratos was already dead, and the group had started playing jazz-rock (in fact, they just strummed and bored their audience after a while)—a band of self-discounters threw an oversized M-80 outside the stadium. It made such a huge roar that the musicians all exchanged glances and stopped playing. Inside the stadium we were all more surprised than afraid. After a couple of minutes Giulio Capiozzo stood up from his drum set and went over to the microphone.

“We'd like to know what just happened,” he said.

That's it. Nothing more. A sincere, completely nonrhetorical question, which in its simplicity provided a pathetic depiction of the state of affairs.

The fact that anyone would ask to know what had happened in the aftermath of a loud explosion from outside the stadium during a concert pointed to the end of a shared experience, the definitive undermining of a political act that had by now lost its original identity. A couple of years earlier, it would have been obvious to everyone that a mass concert-break-in was under way.

The security crew didn't make an issue of it, they just let in the rioters who'd set off the M-80. A total of four or five minutes, all told.

“If we're done with the fireworks, then we'll start playing again,” Capiozzo wrapped up, slightly annoyed, and went back to his drums and quietly sat down.

The concert started up again, and in the meanwhile the bomb-throwers (there might have been a baker's dozen of them) were admitted into the empty space between the bottom tiers and the hurricane fencing along the field. While AreA was playing, the radicals who had thrown the M-80 all looked at each other and started chanting their old battle chant: “Workers' autonomy, organization, armed struggle, revolution.” And the effect was devastatingly pathetic. Both because they were unable to interfere even slightly with the music being played (which, after all, since it was jazz-rock, wasn't even particularly loud), and because they were just a tiny knot of people, and not particularly robust individuals, either: the last holdouts of a battle that, as you could easily see, had long since lost touch with reality and was already firmly rooted in the past, a melancholy low-budget remake of itself. Like Vittorio Gassman's line in the final scenes of
C'eravamo tanto amati
: “The future is now past, and we didn't even notice it happening.”

After that point, what happened is what happened. And we all know what happened. It all came to an end: the self-discounts, the armed struggle, the revolutions, the workers' autonomy. Nowadays, people pay for their concert tickets, and they pay through the nose. Musicians have all become rock stars, or at least they've all tried to without being shy about it. They've lined up to get a spot playing on TV, they've all gone to the the Sanremo Music Festival and even to the Festivalbar. And while formerly they were forced to defend themselves at their concerts against people who indicted them and tried them as criminals, now they whine about their albums being downloaded online. They warn against drugs, sex without love, political views that don't speak the language of the
ggente
—the ordinary people courted by the populists in Rome. They get married (some of them even get married in church), they raise families, rediscover old-fashioned values, quit drinking, quit drugs, and advise young people not to waste their lives.

In the end, the marketplace triumphed. The audience evicted the people. We're freer now than we were then. Free to buy anything we want.

But it's no accident that, when all is said and done, as time goes by, we have less and less music worth buying.

T
he audience applauds as if operated by remote control when Daria Bignardi, beautifully dressed, walks onto the set and reaches the center of the stage, positioning herself with her back to the megascreen, which is showing scenes from the hostage taking in slow motion. She greets the spectators and announces the title of this episode: “Do-it-yourself Justice.”

We guests are seated facing each other in two rows of three.

I'm sitting between Giancarlo De Cataldo and Ambra, wearing a sky-blue suit and my old down-at-the-heels Blundstone 500 slip-on boots, which give just the right touch of slovenliness to my overall look. I have three days' worth of stubble and I'm not wearing a tie.

Across from us sit Emanuele Filiberto, Vittorio Sgarbi, and Fabrizio Corona (who can't seem to stop looking at my Blundstones, though I can't figure out whether that's because he likes the fact that they're so beat up or because he's disgusted with them for the same reason).

Bignardi introduces us to the welcoming applause of the studio audience while the TV cameras archive one face at a time (the first—I'd like to see them try any other order—is mine), she summarizes in a few evocative lines the whole dizzy adventure at the supermarket, then she asks the control booth to run a few sequences (in particular, the one in which Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo scolds me for having an antiquated conception of the legal profession, reiterating the theory of TV as the sole forum for the only kind of trial that really counts anymore), and then opens the dances, starting (and I would have put money on it) with Ambra.

“I don't know about you,” says the TV host and actress, “but I haven't been glued to any television the way I was to this in a long, long time. Aside from the principles in question (televised trials, the question of why you can't take the law into your own hands, etc. etc.), I believe that the live feed from the supermarket has been one of the most gripping and tragic television spectacles that we've witnessed since 9/11.”

Silence falls over the audience in place of the applause that one might expect but which doesn't come.

Daria Bignardi is caught off guard. When a guest beats the clock in terms of the time assigned to them to speak, it's as if the program has just suffered a heart attack. Which means that it runs the risk of stagnating, unless there's an urgent and decisive intervention.

I immediately look at Sgarbi, who nods progressively, showing that he approves—if not of the content, then at least of the aesthetic—of the opinion that Ambra has just expressed.

“Right,” he breaks in, seizing the floor, “very good. I think that's the one sensible thing we can say on the topic.”

Ambra preens, satisfied that she's dodged the bullet of cynicism that she knows she risked.

Emanuele Filiberto blinks twice in succession, as if he can't quite see why Sgarbi found her observation so exhaustive.

“Could I ask you,” Bignardi asks Ambra, starting to take a step forward but then stepping back (which is her way of battling against the basic immobility of the role of moderator without going for a stroll around the set the way some colleagues of hers like to do, for instance Giovanni Floris, who does so much traveling around the studio during his show that sometimes no one even seems to know where he is), “whose side were you on?”

“Well, not on the Camorrista's side, that's for sure,” Ambra replies.

A wave of laughter, followed by applause.

Daria seems put out.

“Have you noticed,” I break in, speaking to everyone and no one in particular at the same time, in an attempt to undercut the irritation that seems to hover in the air, “that a second after the laughter comes the applause? It's a little bit like a second sneeze, don't you think?”

Everyone turns in my direction, baffled.

I wait.

It takes a while to get this one.

The first one to get it is De Cataldo, who unleashes a hearty slap to my leg. The others follow in rotation, nodding and snickering, showing their approval of my subtle juxtaposition.

So now I get a round of applause myself.

Fabrizio Corona intercepts a roving TV camera and shoots it a ferocious glare.

“The second sneeze, nice work, Malinconico: they both come in pairs,” Daria acknowledges.

“Right,” I confirm with some satisfaction.

“In any case, you have a point, Ambra,” she resumes, putting things on a personal level, “I should have been more explicit. The choice was between a despairing father who was demanding justice and a lawyer doing his best to stave off tragedy by insisting that trials should be conducted in a courtroom and not on TV.”

Sgarbi snorts impatiently and brushes his hair with his hand, as if he'd suddenly had a hot flash. No question that Daria's clarification, unobjectionable though it was, did have the ring of rhetoric, truth be told.

“Oh, I was rooting for Malinconico, obviously,” Ambra replies, playing the fool. And she flashes me a big smile which I return without especially wanting to.

“As we were preparing this episode,” Bignardi says, overcoming her momentary disgruntlement to return her focus to the program with admirable professionalism, “we conducted a broad survey of people from various walks of life, and what we found was that everyone, and I mean
everyone
we spoke to, was rooting for Counselor Malinconico during the live broadcast. Does this mean that the country is much more concerned about the protection of civil rights than we imagine? That lawyers are actually more popular than is widely thought? Or is this consensus limited strictly to Malinconico? De Cataldo?”

“Well,” replies the judge/author, shifting around in his seat to get more comfortable, clearly caught off guard by the question, “as much as I may find Malinconico likable, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to name him Italy's favorite son.”

“Why not?” I object.

Laughter.

“Because you have a very different style,
caro mio
,” he replies.

Hey, I think. He's right.

“Does that mean you'd like to have him as a character in one of your novels?” Bignardi cuts in, quick on the uptake.

“Sure,” says De Cataldo.

“As long as we can work out an agreement on the royalties,” I retort promptly.

Applause. Not sure if it's for me or for him.

“In any case, coming back to your question,” De Cataldo resumes, speaking once again to the moderator, “I suspect that it is precisely the division between judicial hardliners and civil rights advocates that constitutes the aberration that has ensured the spread of a generalized mistrust toward the administration of justice in this country. For that we should be grateful to our Counselor Malinconico, because he has reiterated a statement of values that we should all be able to agree on: trials should be held in courtrooms. With all their shortcomings and all their flaws, there is no better place for them.”

“You think?” Corona breaks in, ready for a fight.

“Why, yes. I most certainly do,” De Cataldo confirms.

“Bah,” he retorts, shooting another sour glare at the camera. (“What on earth did those cameras do to you?” I think).

He doesn't seem to want to say anything else; but the next thing you know he's back on the subject, challenging the judge/novelist and actually pointing a finger in his face.

“Go tell that to someone who's been taken hostage by an absurd trial for a crime he was eventually acquitted of.”

“Well, Corona,” De Cataldo replies, unruffled, “the fact that a person was acquitted shows that criminal trials aren't a form of persecution but rather a system subject to an effective oversight process, don't you agree?”

“Vittorio,” Bignardi cuts in, calling on Sgarbi even before Corona has a chance to reply, “is De Cataldo right? Do we live in a country split between judicial hardliners and civil rights advocates? And how would you explain the massive groundswell of support for Counselor Malinconico?”

“Hm,” the critic begins his reply, squirming uncomfortably in his chair, “I think that what happened in the supermarket is an episode that can be analyzed without having to bring in pro-justice topics that I don't think our viewers are any too interested in hearing about.”

“Ah, I see,” says Daria.

As if to say: “Thanks for informing us that up until now nobody's said anything interesting.”

“The engineer and would-be judge, jury, and executioner had, in fact, an iconoclastic plan,” Sgarbi harangues. “That hostage taking and intended execution, offered up to the eyes of an audience practically forced to watch and wonder what it all meant, almost resembled an art installation.”

And at this point he accompanied the statement with his hands, sketching out two imaginary half-moons in the air, as if he were giving form to the concept.