Here, it got dark, every light went out. You can't see from here to there, and even the red curtain with gold fringes has turned black, while strange fish of a soft lilac color swim before my eyes. I'm crazy about fish, maybe because they're the only ones, in this period crap, who don't express opinions about this and that. They swim, that's all, and they do enough already.
They say here that I did not behave well. The role of an infamous, they have saddled me, and on my own I have not much to object to. For it is not civilized to bomb a city, nor to set fire to his houses, and I should not have cut my brother's throat with that sharp blade. It's true that he too hasn't been very tender with me, and you only need to look at me to understand that I'm not doing too well, but perhaps I would have done better to deprive the opportunity because mating between brothers is something that, in principle, is disturbing.
My blood is rushing to my head because they're keeping me hanging by my feet in this darkness embroidered with vertigo, and I tremble at the idea of plunging headfirst into the void, and perhaps breaking the nut in my neck.
Footsteps resound in the darkness, someone runs towards me, I see two women, covered in dark veils, who stop over there and look at me. I'd like to tell them something, but I can't speak because they've determined that I'm already dead. Those, meanwhile, start screaming. The older one, who remains a good chunk of a woman in any case, shouts: «But do you realize the misfortune that has befallen us? We lost two brothers in one fell swoop, who killed each other.'
The other, on whose head grows a tuft of golden curls that sheds more light than a lantern, replies: «One, however, was buried with full honours, while this other one must stay here, hanging, for be torn to pieces and devoured by birds or dogs."
"I'll tell you why", I would like to say to the blonde, but I have to keep quiet because silence is imposed on the deceased, and so I spare her the romance of my pains, the thirst for love that burns me, and the old woman, bitter story of never having meant anything to anyone.
“Give me a hand, Ismene! Let's take him down!" exclaims the sturdier sister, who is the eldest.
“Antigone, be careful! You know it's forbidden to bury him."
«And do you think it's nice that his body remains here, on the road, to be eaten by stray dogs?» Antigone gets angry, who has a good temper, but seriously, and who should never be taken head-on.
“If you bury him, you will be put to death,” Ismene warns her.
"Let's get him down!" insists Antigone, who is indeed one toast layer, and the two sisters reach out their hands towards my head to grab me and lower me to the floor. Here comes the difficult part, and the situation becomes somewhat delicate. In fact, having reached this point, every evening I sweat cold, returning to wondering how I managed to get myself into this situation.
It started a little over a month ago.
Angelo Amoroso, twenty-four years old, that's my name, that's who I am. A good-looking Neapolitan boy, complete with muscles and black curls, but you can fry your muscles and curls if you stay at home in Fuorigrotta, where you can even deceive yourself that you live in Naples, if you really like, but in realities thrive in a suburb quite similar to those of other cities scattered around the planet. All disheartening, I mean, with gardens without flowers and markets where they sell goods that have been discarded elsewhere at bargain prices. And if you don't even earn the shadow of a salary, because you stay without fatigue, then it means that you have no reason to go to Naples often, and you have to spend your days in this extensive dormitory, between the San Paolo stadium and the cemetery, where Mamma Mia has rested for ten years now, and where Pietro recently joined her.
In my life there isn't one thing that goes the right way, starting with the fact that, since he became a widower, my father has become so apprehensive. His name is Giuseppe Amoroso and he kills himself overtime in a post office towards Agnano. He recites every evening, starting punctually at eight and then stopping around ten, the same litany: "Take an example from your sister".
And that is? We both passed the competition to work in the nursery school, but they take Olga because she's a girl, and they don't want me because I have balls. What should I do? jerk them off? If the school discriminates against boys because they don't think they're capable of wiping babies' asses, is it my fault?
It's a good thing dad doesn't ask me to follow my brother's example, because then I'd have to shoot myself. Pietro was driving like a madman the night he had the accident, and I never go to his grave, because it seems to me that papa almost blames me for still being alive, which is explained by the fact that Pietro got very good grades in university, and made us all laugh, while I never had sparks at school, and in terms of keeping people happy, I don't exactly consider myself an ace.
I always have a heavy heart, because of the work that can't be found, and because of the visits that death has suddenly made to our house in recent years, but my father should stop always throwing me down, but if you yell at him on his muzzle, he sobs that he is anxious for me, for my future, for my health, even for the calluses that I don't have, and that he would like to see me fixed up before closing my eyes, as if I were ninety years old. In fact, he just finished fifty-one. The trouble with him is perhaps that, since my mother died, he hasn't fallen in love anymore. At least that's how Olga claims that she, on the other hand, has been in love for almost six years with the cellarman's younger son, whose name is Antonio and unfortunately he is a stutterer.
I met Rita on the subway, while I was wandering around aimlessly to keep away from my father's whining, and I liked her right away. Call me an idiot, but instead of people's heads, I see glass bowls with fish inside. Some keep very ferocious barracudas in their head, that is, horrendous thoughts, the kind that only assassins think of. Others are home to tiny fish, so graceful, which would correspond to somewhat silly reflections, but certainly of little harm. Rita's fish are tropical, with orange and yellow stripes, and while they dance among a thousand bubbles, they occasionally peep out of her eyes.
“I work in the theatre. I'm an assistant director,” she said.
"Uh, how nice!" I screwed up.
"Do you want to work? We are looking for an actor."
Without thinking about it, I said yes, because she smelled of almonds, and she laughed a lot, but today I regret it a little, because Rita is actually fake. That's right, she's all fake! She pretends to be a sheep, but she's a fox! She fluttered her eyelashes, making more air than with a fan, to delude me that a good movie was about to start between us two, the kind with several violins in the soundtrack, and instead she stuck me in like a fool without even giving me a kiss. That's why I'm hanging here.
The idea of hanging me up like a salami comes from Matteo Belmonte, a theater director who grew up in Posillipo, in a kind of ancient manor house, even if he goes on telling everyone, who knows why, that he lived a childhood of hardship. Rita claims that only in this way will his feelings of guilt be appeased for the privileges he has enjoyed and still enjoys. He seems to be famous in London and Berlin as well, and I really wonder why. Maybe up there they can't guess who's holding it shitty, that is, who is all calculation and no heart, yet it is so simple to understand that this only holds a cuckoo clock in its chest. His gaze freezes you, from behind the orange-framed glasses, and those gray curls may even suggest an idea of unruly genius, but they certainly should be shortened. In the invisible glass bowl he wears around his neck, I see a gigantic swordfish aiming to saw the world into very thin slices and then gobble it up without remorse. Maybe he likes it abroad, if that's true, because he has the gloom of someone who knows how to give himself importance, as well as the arrogance silly of the mouse, and it is no coincidence that he always wears gray and black.
"The corpse of Polynices must have been lowered from above!"
The master has decided, and no one has said a word. Polynices, you will have understood, would be myself. So, every evening, they wrap me in a sheet, but so tight that I can hardly breathe, from which only my head and feet stick out. On a mezzanine stand two giants, Vittorio and Cristiano, who hold me by the ankles. Below us are Ada Rocca and Lena Renzi, who play the parts of Antigone and Ismene, and who have to rise on tiptoe to take me in their arms and then set me down, as delicately as possible, on the planks of the stage. All of this, of course, without ceasing to recite the bloody verses of Sophocles.
«Let's hope it works better than Sergio!»
So sighed Matteo Belmonte, studying me in an absorbed tone, and to keep up with him Rita makes a dubious mouth, while I wonder with a certain heartbeat who Sergio is, why it didn't work, and above all what happened to him.
He was obviously playing dead before me, but is he still alive? Will he be in one piece? I found myself wondering with some trepidation throughout the rehearsals, also because the fragility of the arms that are supposed to support me worries me somewhat: Ada Rocca is a big woman, all right, but I weigh seventy-eight kilos, and Lena Renzi she is little more than a little girl, with two bracers rickets that make a certain sympathy.
Who guarantees me that I won't slip out of their hands? How can I be sure that they won't make me fall on the stage boards, with the certainty, falling from over two meters, of breaking my head like a melon?
During the rehearsals, to tell the truth, Ada and Lena pumped up their biceps and handled it honorably, so much so that I still exist, but tonight we are going on stage in front of an audience, and in the dark I perceive the breathing, the whispering, the coughing of a hundred spectators who have gathered in the microscopic audience. And I cannot exclude that their presence, in addition to the fear of judgment from the critics, fills the two actresses with emotion, making them more uncertain in their movements, less timely, more clumsy, with great danger to my safety.
Then there is another detail that alarms me a little: no, it's not the fact that I risk my life without pecking a single lira, because here they claim that the prestige of dealing with a great artist. This isn't what bothers me, nor is the fact that in more than thirty days of rehearsals he hasn't managed to establish a shred of intimacy with Rita. Indeed, one evening, when I wrapped her in my tentacles, the shameless one had the nerve to say: "Please, let's not spoil our beautiful friendship", and it was only out of politeness that I didn't reply: "Why, between us Is there a beautiful friendship?”.
Nor does the fact that, to kill the boredom of holding me suspended by my ankles, those good-timers Vittorio and Cristiano amuse me by titillating the soles of my feet a moment before lowering me down, forcing me to bite my lips to keep from laughing. , since Sophocles doesn't expect Polynices to sneer, no, that doesn't bother me either. It's about something else.
It's Matteo Belmonte, it's the curly-haired genius, who worries me.
He rewarded with fiery kisses and public hugs the efforts that the florid Ada made every evening to pull me down from the scaffolding. The two form a famous couple of lovers, whose photographs continually appear in the newspapers, while they are having fun with politicians, mainly from the progressive area, because the Greek tragedy puts others to sleep. They are very close, or so they say, although she counts twelve more springs, and she was already treading the scenes when he was in kindergarten. So far so good, but last night I glanced into the master's dressing room, and surprised him while, observing just the slightest caution, he was kissing with student-like fervor the diaphanous Lena who, in homage to a symmetrical idea that the genius cultivates existence, she is twelve springs younger than him, and is therefore fresher than her colleague.
It's not that I'm particularly interested in the affairs of the heart of the glacially kind, and internationally known, Matteo Belmonte, but I can't help but ask myself a question: if it's already difficult for the two rivals in love to snatch me from Vittorio's hands and of Cristiano due to my respectable size, what will happen when, in addition to the panic that the presence of the public will inevitably cause to the two actresses, anger and fury will explode in Ada at knowing that her man has betrayed her with Lena?
Will their grip remain solid enough, or will I slip out of their hands and fall onto the stage boards, wrapped up like a mummy and therefore unable to move even a finger, thus putting an end to my stupid days? Fools, yes, because just tonight I learned of another one, just a moment before the curtain went up. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when, in the dark behind the scenes, I saw the indefatigable Matteo Belmonte stick his tongue down the throat of that sly Rita, whose graces I still deluded myself, let alone, of being able to enjoy in due time.
Ada and Lena aren't enough to fill the famous director's nights and afternoons, no, because now he also wants to fuck Rita.
Why do women like the worst, the smartest and the fakest? If I were a woman, I swear on my father's head, I wouldn't deign Matteo Belmonte to look at him. The world, however, goes on in his own way, and no one can stop him. Women, but not only them, prefer those who feign authority over those who show genuine enthusiasm, because enthusiasm belongs to those who stay young for a long time, and we know that young people are always happy to laugh.
And here I am, athletic and curly-haired, cute enough, even if not even a dog has sniffed me for years, hanging in mid-air above the stage tables, ready to be lowered into the arms of the two artists. Will they be up to the tough task? With sweaty fingers they touch my temples, they try to grab me by the shoulders, and I close one eye to try to guess from their expressions if Ada has found out about Lena, and if she has found out about Rita. If so, you can even say goodbye to Angelo Amoroso who is about to crash on these tables without leaving behind anything to regret. Holy shit, but I don't want to die! There is still so much life in my future! For such a demanding step it still seems a bit early to me. Somewhere in the stalls, Olga and Dad are sitting. Who knows what reaction the old man would have when he saw me fall, but I bet he wouldn't cry half the tears he shed for Pietro. Not even half, I assure you, and all of a sudden I'm pissed off, but the biblical kind, because I've had such a bad time always depending on things I can't control, and I swear that if I save myself tonight, in the theater I'm not going back and I'm going to fuck off dad too. I am applying for a job for Pistoia, precisely, because they tell me that the position is taken immediately there, and that the kindergartens also accept boys, so I say goodbye to Fuorigrotta and finally see a bit of the world. The important thing, though, is that they don't kill me tonight. Ada actually sends a shiver down my spine when she yells at Lena.
"Let's give him a proper burial!"
To you ea màmmeta, I would like to reply, but I can't, because Sophocles doesn't even expect Polynices to curse, and then I just have to wait for these two idiots to bring me down, but I confess to you as if you were all my close relatives that, in the meantime, I feel a little ' strange, different from the everyday Loving Angel. You'll say it's because I'm scared of breaking my neck, but I know it's not just that. The truth is that I am very annoyed, almost offended.
Francesco Costa. Journalist, from Naples, he has written films such as The other woman by Peter Del Monte (which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1980 Venice Film Festival), e Così fan tutte by Tinto Brass. He is the author of ten novels, mostly with a Neapolitan setting, two of which have become films (The three-legged fox with Miranda Otto and The cheating in the sheet with Maria Grazia Cucinotta). Perhaps because of his German origins he is attentive to the theme of doubles, doubles and conspiracies. Also author of children's books, he won the Bancarellino Selection Award 2011 with The school of poisons. His books are translated in Germany, Spain, Greece, Japan.
