Читать книгу Mistress - The Italian way - Delilah Jay - Страница 9

On Ponza, in the Villa del’Sole, his summer residence on the hill, he makes his preparations. The Gransignore in Carozza on Ponza, philosophizing with Amos about the IPO at the Hong Kong stock exchange of that Italian car manufacturer with the international name, charm, reputation. They also rejoice, here and now, in their investments in emerging markets. Topping the list is India.

“It’s us who are winning here in Italy! Look at this: we’ve been able to bring all our secret monies back home, from all our bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands!”

He laughs gloatingly.

“The Italian state does not punish us. Not for corruption. Not for tax evasion. Long live Italy!”

Gransignore is conscious of his victory. Now. Here. Always. He is president of this enterprise, and not only this one. Full of pride - a conceited peacock - he struts arrogantly and self-aggrandisingly across many a playing field, awaiting adulation.

“And we’re well able to hide it,” he hears a voice from within the circle, can’t make out whose.

Not important enough. Not powerful enough to be recognized. But true.

“To our Fondazioni! Hidden within companies, without the owners’ names, without taxation!”

The peacock declaims in the sun.

“Those stupid Europeans will save Italy, of course. We don’t pay!”

We are the “signori”, the untouchables. That’s what he thinks.

“You just wait,” I mumble to myself, watching from a safe distance.

The racing car jerk, flash, silk scarf around his neck, is setting up a party, wants to get into politics. Another ridiculous character who will rob Italy. Rob it of its authenticity by destroying nature, erecting buildings with permits obtained by blackmail, accepting favours and privileges. With him, Amos. They will both be held accountable - not just by a court of law, also by nature, by God and the coming generations. An elegant silk scarf around his neck, the narrow nose held high, resembling an ageing civetta - an owl. What a comparison! “Il giorno della civetta” - The Day of the Owl?

“SERENITA,” one can hear him say - and again, his favourite saying.

“Vi auguro serenita!”

They direct the orchestra. The question is, how many musicians are still playing, for how long? Even the audience of the Italian opera will get it eventually.

“I will create jobs, here, near Naples. In Campagna. Look, I’ll show you what to do!”

He talks to his people, this Gransignore. Here, in Campagna, the home of the Camorra? Setting up a company that manufactures overhead railways and gets them to fly - or crash? Who is that supposed to help now? The voter, who has to watch this: the shoe manufacturer, the Philosopher of High Finance and his mergers & acquisitions, alcohol & cigarette enterprises, banks, real estate, fashion houses, art galleries, all those whose investments were bought or scammed - on the back of a country that would do well to get back to itself, to its good food, its wines, the beautiful sea, the olive groves. A “new” Silvio Berlusconi for Italy? No, Silvio has worked against that, has charmingly done the groundwork with humour and audacity. This now is planned, devastating: it’s the Gransignore in Carozza.

“I’ve lost nearly 43 million euros on my yachts in one year,” we heard him lamenting in the papers - understandably, since we’ve just had an economic crisis.

Which, incidentally, some of us still have. Forty-three million is less than five percent of his estimated fortune!

“We understand you,” one can hear the voices of the people in the background.

Subservient as they are, most of the Italians. That’s what they were taught, what they inherited. “The Manifesto” says something else entirely. There, they know how to go up against capitalism, how to dare, on the side of the “socialists”. Those were forty-three private millions. Untaxed of course, since they come in via the various “legal” channels: reinvested millions from Swiss bank accounts, from the Luxemburg based foundation “CHIC” - founded together with Amos, my God of Love, whom I loved, and the manufacturer of tiny shoes with gummi bears stuck to the heel. And of course Bellarosa. Legally taxed in Liechtenstein and I’m sure that, if Berlusconi had grabbed one less "Veline" - the Italian invention of the Playboy-Bunny - and seized the moment, then he would not have missed the Gransignore and all his friends - his “amici di merenda”. Friends who share their sweeties during afternoon tea, while concocting a devious plan. “Amici di merenda” - a term that originated from the murders of kissing couples in cars and meadows in and around Florence. One lies in wait, the other attacks. Which one of them lies in wait? Amos or the Gransignore?

“Ma no... che ne pensi... noi siamo i signori!” What, us? No!

The result is always the same: there are victims. Whether here and now in Naples, or back then in Florence. Berlusconi’s candy seems rather harmless by comparison: always age-dependent. Later, the sweeties have long legs and are under eighteen. Still made from sugar, though lower in calories and more about heightening potency. The Gransignore took over presidency of the automobile corporation from the godfather - his godfather. Dottori, professori, ingenieri, avvocati, monsignori, among themselves. Whose avvocati? Their own? Whose professori? Aren’t they all venerated and feared at the best university of Italy? At the Bocconi in Milano? No, they keep hiding: behind a veneer of jurisdiction and justice. Both of them. Isn’t a grand old man said to have loved small boys, to have obtained them - he could, after all, with his influence, his power, his money. He, the godfather. MIND GAME. Power & control. Again. But not just that. Do such affectations rub off? The perversion that knows no boundaries? How far do you go - here, in this Italy where nearly everything is permitted, remains unseen because of fear? Do I now have to imagine that the old man, the “generoso” who handed his empire to the Gransignore in Carozza, also handed him the silence of the children whom he was assumed to have abused? Yes,

I suppose so. When many people know about it, when they whisper and keep quiet about it, then those who are close associates will know a lot more about it. They just turn away. Pretend it isn’t true. Even I could not believe it, but it was just too similar to all those stories about Michael Jackson - be they true or not. No smoke without fire, right? And this is the man that my God of Love, Amos, is so close to? The man who preaches water and drinks wine. Wine, incidentally, that he knows nothing about. All that aside: a man who maybe would offer his only son, Feliciano, as fodder to this mob? Physically as well as emotionally? In preparation for his future responsibility? What a saint Silvio Berlusconi is, compared to them! Having little defenceless children on the menu is in a somewhat different moral league than bedding someone who isn’t quite eighteen yet! I think of my own son and a veritable shudder engulfs my entire body. Adrenalin. Rarely experienced to that degree. Rarely tasted. Persisting. Is my imagination going too far? No, not at all. I am a mother. More than these men ever will be or have been fathers. Their love is focused on themselves. Only on themselves. They sacrifice nothing. Nothing is sacred to them. Nothing is precious. Their values are adorned with numbers followed by many zeroes, in their secret accounts in Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong. Offshore. Official. You can read about it in many articles of local and regional gazettes and the more serious national papers. Written by journalists who have uncovered more details than the police, the Carabinieri or the Guardia di Finanza ever have done or will do. Circumstantial evidence only. No proof. These are persons “di buona famiglia” - from a good family, practically untouchable. I grab at them, touch them, hit them. Torment them. Them, whom the world applauds. Them, whom the world envies.

“Attention at the platform! Train floating in!”

The new slogan for the successor of the “wheels”, the horsepower from Southern Italy. The new means of transportation in Italy, the overhead railway, feathered with corrupt machinations? How else would this be financed? Everyone has a share: a percentage share in the directorships and executive boards - same as ever: Amos, Bellarosa, the Gransignore, fashion manufacturers and all the rest of the Clan. Careful, the shares are down! Calling all stock exchanges! I am reminded of Pasquale -the character form Roberto Saviano’s book “Gomorrah”. Pasquale is a tailor in Caserta Province north of Naples. He makes the most beautiful dresses, creates what even designers can’t put on paper. Pasquale himself has no idea for whom he sews those badly paid dresses. They come down from Milano, give their orders to whoever promises to work fastest and cheapest. For starvation wages, without security. They only survive for as long as they can sew. The alternative is to get involved with the Clan proper: drugs, human trafficking, garbage crises. The planned poisoning of the earth. Murdering their own families - this generation and the next and the ones after. They stop at nothing. The fish provided by the Mediterranean around Naples is unfit for human consumption thanks to the toxic waste illegally sunk into ocean and earth. People fall ill, die. Nobody wants to know. Is it them, the Clan from Milano and Ferrara, who make their profits that way? One day, Pasquale sees Angelina Jolie in the papers, on television. Pasquale can’t go to Ponza, where they are at home - the mighty members of the Clan. Pasquale does not believe his eyes when he sees Angelina Jolie in HIS dress. He who gives his talent, his skills, for a few cents an hour, to be able to feed his family. He gives up and never sews again. Instead, he joins the Clan. Life is hard for him and his family. The only alternative left for him - as brought about by the Clan - is the Clan. That’s what Roberto Saviano tells us in his book “Gomorrah”.

Back to the overhead railway: they want to have it manufactured down here, near Naples - the new railway. Utilizing public funds to set up tax avoidance schemes for some selected clowns of Northern Italian society? Everything rolling nicely. Except for their yachts, which float, and their private planes and helicopters, which lift off, just like they do themselves. Among their own kind with all their old millionaire and billionaire chums on Ponza. The olden days music box blares “Oh sole mio” in the little bar on Ponza, down by the harbour, where I linger, observing, while the Monopoly players on the island nurse their power and glory. The jukebox warbles “Azzurro, il pomeriggio e troppo azzuro e lungo per me” in mono. Drop another euro in and I’ll have free choice again.