Let the Games Begin (34 page)

‘And what do they want from us?'

The football player smiled in amusement. ‘They thought . . . Well . . . they thought we were Communists.'

Uproarious, spontaneous laughter rose up from the guests. ‘Ha ha ha . . . Us? Haven't they seen what we look like? We hate Communists,' said Riccardo Forte, an emerging businessman in the aluminium laminate field. ‘Have you explained
to them that Communism is dead and buried? That Communists are rarer than . . .' He couldn't think of a paradigm.

‘Than Paninari,' added Federica Santucci, the DJ from Radio 109.

‘Of course, I told them. And I told them that the Soviet regime no longer exists, and that Russians are much richer than Italians. I told them that I, too, am Russian, and that I am a football player, and that I do whatever I like, seeing as I make a shitload of money.'

Suddenly there was a light, fizzy feeling in the air around the guests. They were all happy and they patted each other on the back in solidarity.

The old king spoke to the football player again, who translated: ‘The old man here has said that they will set us free if we promise not to tell anyone of their existence. They aren't ready to leave the catacomb.'

‘No problem. Who would we tell?' said one guy.

‘What's the problem? I've already forgotten it,' said another.

A girl with long red hair was looking around. ‘How weird! I can't see them any more.'

Michele Morin, the director of the TV series
Dottoressa Cri
, stood up.

‘Guys . . . Please! I'm serious! Your attention, please. Let's cross our hearts and hope to die. So they'll relax. They deserve it.'

‘They could let us take a couple of photos, though. They look like something out of a fairy tale. I work for
Vanity Fair
'.

‘Anyway, I've had a great time. I can't wait to tell Filippo about it . . .'

They all stood up and were wandering around the crypt, studying this underground population with interest. Finally,
they were starting to have fun. Much better than Chiatti's organised hunts. This was the real surprise.

‘Darling fatsos.'

‘Look at the children. So cute.'

²
‘Hush!'

³
‘Are you Soviet?'

⁴
‘I'm Russian . . .'

 

68

During the period when Rome local councils managed the park, the old sluice gate that regulated the flow of water into Villa Ada's big artificial basin had created a lot of problems for the maintenance workers. In the last ten years it had broken at least six times, and each time it had been repaired. Time passed, the huge rusty valve began to leak again, and the lake dried up, leaving behind a carpet of dark, vile slush.

When Villa Ada had been bought by Sasà Chiatti, the water works had been replaced with a new, more sophisticated system. The ingenious young Texan engineer Nick Roach, who had become famous for overseeing the building of the Stanley Dam in Albuquerque and the Aqua Park in Taos, had been flown in directly from Austin to design the complex hydraulic network that would fuel rivers and creeks, two artificial lakes, the animal troughs, the fountains and the skimmer pool.

The technician had spread sensors throughout the basins in Villa Ada. These would continously send information on the water levels, temperature, carbonate hardness and pH to the computers in the control room. A programme designed by Roach with the help of the Douphine Inc. software company managed, via the pump system, the flow into all of the basins, recreating the natural conditions of Lake Victoria, the Orinoco Basin and the Mekong Delta.

While he was there conducting the construction of the water
works, the engineer had come across the old sluice gate in the big south lake. The valve was a piece of industrial archeology: huge, covered in lichen and with a cast-iron wheel. The factory trademark was moulded on the top: ‘Fonderie Trebbiani. Pescara. 1846.' Roach had stood there studying it, dumbfounded, and then knelt down on the ground and begun to sob.

His mother's name was Jennifer Trebbiani and she was originally from Abruzzo.

In the last days of her life, when the cancer had invaded her intestine, the woman had muttered to her son that her great-grandfather had left Pescara for the Americas, leaving the family-run iron foundry in his brother's hands.

Hence, strictly speaking, that valve had been produced in the iron foundry of his ancestors.

In a moment of nostalgia, Nick Roach had decided to leave the sluice gate where it was within the new water works. He knew that it wasn't the right thing to do from a technical point of view and that probably, should there ever be a blackout, it would expose the valve to pressure above its capacity. But he did it anyway, in honour of his mother and his ancestors from Pescara.

When, on the night of the party, the electricity had failed, all of the computers that regulated the water flow, and the pumps that kept the level of the basin constant, had shut down and the lake had begun to fill with water, subjecting the pipeworks and the water sluices to exceptional pressure levels.

At 4:27 a.m. all of the joins in the pipes were spraying water like sprinklers, but the old valve seemed to be holding up. Then there was a sinister sound, a metallic screech, and the cast-iron wheel popped up in the air like a Champagne cork. The pipe
exploded and two million litres of water contained in the basin were sucked down into the outlet pipe at the centre of the lake, creating in just a few minutes a maelstrom that sucked down crocodiles, turtles, sturgeon, water lilies and lotuses.

That great body of water opened up an abyss in the ground and smashed through a tuff-rock tunnel in the catacomb that passed right under the lake and began to fill with water just as if it were a huge pipeline. It took less than three minutes to flood the first floor of the ancient Christian cemetery, and dragging with it everything it found in its path – bones, stones, spiders and mice – it threw itself spitting and gurgling down the steep staircases dug tirelessly with the Christians' rudimentary chisels, and onto the floor below. There the water, hindered by the narrow diameter of the staircases, seemed to lose power. But then a huge slab of tuff rock crumbled like a sandcastle beneath a wave and the water forged a new course that allowed it to express its unstoppable rage and to drown everything in its path. The ancient affrescoes representing two doves in love, which had been there for two thousand years, were ripped off the walls of the tomb of a rich fabric merchant.

And then the fearful torrent, humming like a reactor, continued in the dark towards the great crypt where the guests and the Russian athletes were gathered.

New and Revival Dances by DJ Sandro

69

The guests were chatting, expressing opinions, crowding around the Russians like they were at the opening of an art exhibition. Federico Gianni, the Managing Director of Martinelli, covered in shreds of the lion hunt uniform, was talking to Ciba. ‘Listen, this is an unbelievable story . . . Soviet athletes who have been living in Rome's subsoil for fifty years. This would make an incredible novel. Up there with
The Name of the Rose
, if you know what I mean.'

Fabrizio didn't want to give too much away. That man was a great big fake. ‘You reckon? I don't think it's that special. These sort of things happen reasonably often.'

‘Are you kidding? This could turn into a great novel. This story, with the right sort of marketing campaign in the shops, would walk off the shelves.'

The writer rubbed his chin. ‘I don't know . . . I'm not convinced.'

‘You have to be the one to write it. Without a doubt.'

Fabrizio couldn't help himself. ‘Why don't you get Saporelli to write it?'

‘Saporelli's too young. This would take a much more experienced pen, someone of your calibre. Someone who changed modern Italian literature.'

Those compliments were starting to soften the armour of the author of
The Lion's Den
.

To be honest, the arsehole wasn't wrong: that story was
much better than the great Sardinian saga, but he couldn't drop his pants straight away.

‘I'll have to think about it . . .'

Gianni wasn't prepared to weaken his hold. His eyes were sparkling. ‘You are the only one who could write this sort of book. We could even include a DVD.'

The idea was beginning to inspire Fabrizio. ‘A DVD? You reckon? Would that work?'

‘You bet. Tons of extra content. Like the history of the catacomb . . . and loads of other stuff. It's up to you. I give you carte blanche.' Gianni put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Listen, Fabrizio. We haven't spoken much lately. That's part of the deal of keeping this whole kit and caboodle running. Why don't we get together for a work lunch in the next few days? You deserve more.' He paused for effect. ‘In all senses.'

A terrible burden disappeared, his tense diaphragm suddenly relaxed and Fabrizio realised that since the presentation for the Indian he had been living in a state of continual physical unease. He smiled. ‘All right, Federico. Let's talk tomorrow and we'll organise a date.'

‘Great, Fabri.'

How long had it been since he'd called him Fabri? Hearing him say it again was honey to his ears.

‘Listen, I saw you with that singer . . . What's her name?'

Fuck me. Larita!
He had forgotten all about her.

Gianni's eyes softened at the thought of the girl. ‘Nice bit of skirt. Have you nailed her yet?'

While Fabrizio was looking around to see where Larita had ended up, a loud rumble resounded inside the ancient necropolis.

At first the writer thought it was an explosion above ground, but then he realised that the rumbling kept on going. In fact,
it was getting louder, and the earth was shaking beneath their feet.

‘What's happening now? I can't take any more . . .' Magic Daniel snorted, feeling fed up.

‘Must be fireworks,' his boyfriend, the stage actor Roberto De Veridis, answered, excited. ‘Come on, let's hurry . . . We missed out on the Midnight matriciana and I don't want to miss out on the croissants for no reason . . .'

No, these aren't fireworks
, Fabrizio said to himself. It sounded more like an earthquake.

His infallible instinct which normally informed him whether it was worth his while to go to a certain party or not, that let him perceive whether or not to do an interview and suggested to him the right moment to appear and disappear from the limelight, this time informed him that he should immediately abandon that place.

‘Excuse me just a moment . . .' he said to Gianni.

He started looking for Larita, but he couldn't find her anywhere. He did find Matteo Saporelli, who stripped in a corner and was covering his body with dirt while he hummed ‘Livin' la Vida Loca'.

He went over to his colleague. ‘Saporelli. Let's go. Quickly. Let's get out of here'. He stretched out his hand.

The young writer looked up at him through goggle eyes with pupils the size of pinpricks and started rubbing dirt under his armpits.

‘No thanks, sweetcakes . . .' he said. ‘I think this is a magical place. And I'm convinced that we should all try to love each other more. That's the problem today. We've forgotten that this planet is our home and will have to house our offspring for thousands and thousands of years to come. What do we want to leave them with? A handful of flies?'

Ciba looked at him, feeling shattered. The pill had already gone to his head. ‘You're right. Why don't we go outside so you can explain it to me better?'

Saporelli was touched. He hugged him. ‘You're the best, Ciba. I would come with you, but I can't. I will erect a temple in this place to the future memory, so when the aliens come they will find the ancient remains of this sick civilisation. And remember that this land belongs to nobody. Nobody can dare to say that this is mine, this is yours . . . The land belongs to mankind, and that's it.'

‘All right, Saporelli. Good luck.' Ciba made his way through the crowd. Everyone had stopped chit-chatting and was silently listening to the sound as it became more and more deafening.

Where the fuck has Larita disappeared to? Maybe they didn't bring her here
.

A puff of hot, damp air, like you feel when an underground train passes by, ruffled his hair. Fabrizio turned around and a black, winged cloud was expelled from the tunnel and splattered around the subterranean cavern.

He didn't have time to understand what it was before a bat as big as a glove landed on his face. He felt the animal's filthy hair rubbing against his lips. Screaming in disgust, he slapped it away and crouched down, covering his head with his arms.

The guests began to squeal as if suddenly possessed by the tarantella, jumping up and down to avoid the rats that shot between their legs, flapping their arms to keep the bats away.

Why are the mice fleeing? Because they're abandoning the sinking ship
.

Fabrizio realised that the Russians were moving away quickly through a tunnel opposite to where the rumbling was coming
from. The men had gathered the children into their arms, and even the king and queen had been thrown over the shoulders of two fatsos. He had to follow them.

As he elbowed his way through the people, he saw Larita. She was on the ground and hundreds of rodents were crawling over her. The ground was shaking more and more violently. Tibias, skulls, rib bones were falling from the crypts.

Fabrizio stopped. ‘Lar . . .' An old senator from the Central Democratic Union party ran into Fabrizio, screaming ‘It's the end!', while a woman holding a femur in her hand, trying to slap the bats away, hit the writer on the bridge of his nose. Ciba covered his face. ‘Ahhh . . . Fucking stupid bitch!' He turned towards the singer. She was still there, on the ground. Defenceless. She looked like she'd fainted.

The cave was shaken with swarms of vibrations and it was difficult to keep standing.