Persecution (9781609458744) (13 page)

Just at that time, the time of mass motorization, Cesare Spizzichino had rented a piece of land on Via Tiburtina, not far from the Pirelli factory, and there he had set up his little business, which had become the most prosperous in the whole region. The fact is that the fatter the wallet of Signor Spizzichino grew and the more prosperity flooded him, the greater was the desire to somehow free himself from his humble origins. This had led him to entrust to his two daughters the task, so dear to all the parvenus in the world, of gaining some social respectability through education and culture. Stella and Rachel Spizzichino were the first two university graduates in the family: in medicine the living one, in pharmacology the dead one. A record that filled the massive body of Signor Spizzichino with such pride that tears came to his eyes.

A completely different history from that of the Pontecorvos, on whom the practice of the medical profession for at least four generations, together with assimilation, had bestowed a temperate affability that someone might have called condescension, if not negligence.

That these two worlds, different almost to the point of contradiction—now that they had been stuck together by a marriage that tenaciously endured, thanks to a strong emotion—seized on every irrational pretext to fight isn't so difficult to explain or to understand. Whatever certain enlightened souls may think, there is nothing more indigestible than diversity, and nothing more comforting than to fight what one can't understand. Loving each other and not understanding each other was the fate and the secret of Leo and Rachel, and of many other happy, stubbornly indissoluble couples of their generation.

 

In the autumn preceding the Christmas vacation in Switzerland the conjugal serenity of Leo and Rachel Pon­tecorvo was jeopardized by what later passed into history as the “crisis of Sigonella.”

The night between the tenth and eleventh of October the carabinieri, employed by the Italian government headed by Bettino Craxi, had challenged the arrest of a handful of Palestinian terrorists by the U.S. Delta Force—directed from thousands of kilometers away by the no less resolute and bellicose Ronald Reagan. The theater of this psychodrama was the small landing strip of the military airport of Sigonella. On that tongue of asphalt, cooled by the fragrant night wind, Italian and American troops had come within a hairsbreadth of firing at each other. And certainly for a very juicy prize. The disputed terrorists were responsible for the kidnapping of the cruise ship
Achille Lauro
, whose conclusion had been the killing of the American Jewish paraplegic Leon Klinghoffer.

The interest, both practical and symbolic, of the Americans in capturing the murderers of their fellow-citizen was obvious. Equally obvious was the interest of the Italians in having their so-called territorial rights respected. In the end the Italian soldiers, without recourse to weapons but protected by nationalist pride and international law, had got the best of their opponents, like David over Goliath. Which had literally outraged Rachel, just as it had flooded Leo's blood vessels with patriotic pride.

And while the friction between Italian and American diplomats had been violent, never, not even in its most dramatic moments, had it reached the polemical force that at the same time, and as a result of the same dispute, disrupted the living room of the Pontecorvo house. It was as if the Sigonella case had sucked up into itself the already existing reasons for discord between spouses who were constantly quarreling. Begin­ning with the human and political judgment of Bettino Craxi, and ending with much more cogent arguments on Judaism and anti-Semitism, there was nothing on which Leo and Rachel could find agreement.

To Rachel it seemed emblematic (the closing of the circle) that that politician so adored by Leo should be stained with a crime that she considered among the most infamous—anti-Semitism. On the other hand for a man like Leo Pontecorvo, who since he came of age had carried in his wallet the membership card of the Socialist Party, and who, although he had never been active in it, followed its activities with the emotional partisanship of a soccer fan, to see Bettino Craxi express himself, on the runway at Sigonella, at the height of virile energy, well, it had been a joy.

A Socialist in power, a Socialist whose Socialist arguments prevail, a modern Socialist who wants to modernize the left, a Socialist who hates the Communists, by whom he is hated, a Socialist whom everyone respects and fears and, by virtue of that respect and that fear, has shoulders broad enough to bear any partisan gossip . . . and now, finally, a Socialist who holds back those arrogant Americans, who doesn't allow himself to be stepped on by that cowboy, that two-bit vaudeville actor Ronald Reagan. It was enough to give you an orgasm.

As you see, Leo's love for Craxi trumped his love of all things foreign, reawakening in him chauvinistic sentiments. Leo's indulgence of Bettino Craxi, which sometimes touched on complacency, found a sugary correspondence in Rachel's sentimentality toward the Jews. Which explains why the altercation over the Sigonella case had reached such a level of exasperation.

The place where that clash occurred was the one preferred by both. Leo, after his shower, was shaving his cheeks (he always did it at night) in front of the mirror, which was clouded by steam. While Rachel, in her small adjacent boudoir, was choosing (with her usual impatience) the clothes to wear the next day. Only at the end of the dialogue that I am about to transcribe did the two face each other, now in the bedroom: he with his neck mutilated, she in her nightgown, with the clothes angrily balled up in one hand:

“What does anti-Semitism have to do with it? You people think the world is divided into Jews and anti-Semites.”

“Why do you talk as if it had nothing to do with you? As if you weren't in that world? You think that if instead of a Jewish paraplegic it had been a beautiful Catholic girl, what do I know . . . from Catania, your hero, your leader, would have shown the same indulgence toward those killers?”

“What indulgence? What the fuck indulgence are you talking about? I haven't seen any indulgence. If anything I've seen great severity. From a head of government tired of wiping the Americans' boots.”

“Those same Americans who kept the Nazis from finishing that little job they began? It's those Americans you're talking about? What do you know about it? What do all of you know—you were in the mountains playing bridge among the cows.”

“Do I have to be ashamed of my parents' far-sightedness, if they left at the right moment? Do you want to blame me for that as well?”

“I'm only saying that we're talking about the same Americans who liberated us. Who saved us!” (Here for the first time Rachel's voice trembled.)

“And for how long should we go on paying the bill? The
Achille Lauro
is Italian territory. Just like the airport where those shits wanted to make yet another surprise attack. Why shouldn't I be happy that this time they found a responsible head of state in their way? One with balls. One who doesn't get intimidated. One who knows how to stand up to fascists.”

“And who might those fascists be? The Americans are fascists? Well, my dear, I think your ideas are a bit confused. Sometimes you talk like Rita and Flavio. The real fascists here are the pirates who seize a ship full of nice people and who—note—among all those present shoot a Jew in the head. The only thing I know is that your Messiah has managed things so that the guy who killed the
nth
innocent Jew gets off scot free.”

“No one went free. No one. Now those shits are in our hands!”

“And Abu Abbas?”

“What about Abu Abbas?”

“Didn't they let him escape? You know where Abu Abbas is now?”

“I don't know. But I'm sure you're about to tell me.”

“Eating lamb in cinnamon sauce and drinking mint tea to our health! That's where he is! He's out having fun with his Bedouin friends, blessing the merciful anti-Semitic Italian people! And the instigators of this most recent massacre of the Jews are sitting at his table.”

“Let me remind you that there wasn't a massacre. There was only one victim . . . ”

“Do you hear yourself? You're talking like them! A single Jew isn't enough for you? To outrage you they have to be murdered by the truckload?”

“That's not what I'm saying. I'm only pointing out that whenever certain subjects come up you get carried away, you exaggerate. And otherwise you never do. Usually exaggeration is
my
prerogative. But when it comes to the Jews and Israel you surge past me. Like that time you wanted me to drop everything—hospital and patients—and go get the boys at school, because you were afraid that the demonstration against the occupation of Lebanon might, who knows how, involve them.”

“I had every right to be worried. A classmate of Filippo's had called us murderers.”

“Nonsense.”

“Does the death of that child seem nonsense?”

“What child?”

“Stefano Tachè. Those pigs . . . If I just think that that day I was supposed to go to temple with Semi . . . ” Here Rachel's voice wavered a second time. But rage won out again over emotion:

“Doesn't the idea of that pig now back in his own house, welcomed like a patriot because he cleansed the world of another Jew, make your blood boil? And that Klinghoffer's relatives, instead, have to swallow the usual bitter pill? A poor wretch, whose only crimes were to be a Jew and to be innocent. Is that why you rejoice? Because your fine Socialist government handles things in such a way that the murderers of Jews go unpunished? Is that what, in your view, we needed? Another anti-Semitic government?”

And at these words Rachel couldn't hold out: she had begun to sob. And only then did Leo, who couldn't bear Rachel's tears any more than he could bear the fact that he had been the one to cause them, end the quarrel by embracing her: “Come on, sweetheart, everything will be all right . . . ”

 

Scarcely two months had passed since Leo and Rachel had been at each other's throat about the Sigonella case and here they were, on the eve of the Christmas holiday, clashing again on the appropriateness of taking Samuel's pubescent girlfriend with them. With less bitterness, perhaps, but for reasons that would have a much more devastating effect on their life than the death of poor Leon Klinghoffer. The tone was, as usual, sarcastic and melodramatic. The place this time was inside a Jaguar, barreling along at a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour on the Nuova Cassia:

“I refuse to take my twelve-year-old son's girlfriend on vacation.”

“Don't be ridiculous. What can they do? They know there will be this she-wolf foaming at the mouth who is watching out for the virginity of her wolf cub! You won't believe it, sweetheart, but permissiveness offers some unimaginable strategic advantages. Defuses at its origin any transgressive desire. In other words permissiveness is a really good thing.”

“It's not a matter of being permissive or not. This is all wrong and ridiculous. The wrong message given to Samuel.”

“Oof, you're so obsessed with these messages you're giving.”

“You remember how you and I had to win the right to go on a trip together?”

“So you want to take it out on Samuel?”

“I don't want to take it out on him. On the contrary. I want him to understand the value of certain conquests.”

“Conquests? You want to make him some kind of Christo­pher Columbus?”

“Why can't a person ever speak seriously to you? I repeat, we had to sweat for it.”

“Well, only because your father wouldn't give in! If it was up to him, you would have ended up like the pharaoh's horse: buried at his side . . . I saved your life! It wasn't my fault if Meyer didn't feel like teaching and sent me. And yes: at twenty-eight I was already teaching, and came to school in a sports car, like Dustin Hoffman. And you were the virginal student whom the depraved professor sunk his claws into. Lord, if you made me sweat, my love! Your pleasure, I mean, your love . . . ”

“You are so vulgar!”

“You realize that our first non-secret trip was our honeymoon?”

“Exactly. It was so wonderful, so liberating . . . ”

“You're right, maybe Samuel and Camilla should get married . . . ”

“Please, stop it. You know how exasperating it is when you don't take what I say seriously. As I see it: the things you win on the battlefield are much more exciting.”

“I know how you see it. In grand stereotypes. If you want we can lock Semi in the storeroom for a year. When he comes out he'll be full of life . . . ”

“Stop it!”

“All right, I'm sorry. But it's hard for me to speak seriously about things I don't consider serious.”

“Because, in your childish enthusiasm, you haven't thought about the practical questions.”

“And what might they be?”

“The chalet isn't big enough. There's only one bathroom. Camilla is a girl, at a difficult age: she needs her privacy. It will be just as embarrassing for us to share the bathroom with her as it will be for her to share it with us. And then where does she sleep?”

“Well, it means Filippo and Samuel will sacrifice by sleeping on the couch in the living room and leaving Camilla their room.”

“But really! Aside from all your apparent indulgence, even you must feel it won't work?”

Of course he felt it. And theoretically he would even have been inclined to say she was right. Nonetheless he didn't give in, for the usual reasons that husbands and wives don't give in: stubbornness, pride, desire to get the best of the adversary. And in the end he had won. His motion had, so to speak, passed. The careless deconstructive dialectic had routed the worn maternal anxieties and puritanical diktats of Rachel.

And how could he know, poor man, that by winning that little conjugal skirmish he had laid the foundations, like a short-sighted general, for losing the most important battle of his life?