That summer, I decided to go with Aurelia’s idea: he’s the best, he loves me, I want a baby! Naively, I ask her:
“How do I do that? Got him used to being careful - I don’t use contraception.”
Aurelia advises:
“Just don’t let him out again! You’ll see - you’ll be pregnant before you can count to three!”
She should know, she has three children.
“And how do I do that?” I ask Aurelia, uncertainly.
She laughs and says:
“I think you can manage that, don’t you?”
He was inside of me and I wouldn’t let him out. He loved it! Me, I’m imagining a baby.
“What are you up to?” Amos, my God of Love, asks me.
“I want your baby,” I say and am reminded of Romy Schneider in Sissi.
Yes! From now on, he never wanted to get out of me again... He couldn’t wait to come inside of me. To come into me. Just never get out again. Never ever get out. It will happen...
All worries and troublesome thoughts, from Bellarosa to the possibility that he might not support me, had gone overboard. Feeling no fear, no danger. No warning would have worked now. Never. There was only he and I. He even wrote our story - even named me by my original name in his book: Maria, who had his son. Aelita, the mother. I think of the stable in Bethlehem and of “Saint Joan of the Stockyards”. Brecht between virtue and greed. His story is Don Giovanni, told and interpreted by his son, whom he never saw. Never knew. In his story. Suddenly both men find each other. The son is a teenager by then and they spend all their time philosophizing about Don Giovanni. Amos’ book is published in late summer -just for a few people. So he says. Published by his “communications company”, the publishers of philosophy. Published as a special kind of silent movie. His love of art, philosophy, of himself - his second “Laurea” at over forty years of age - tired of all those many directorships and board meetings. Another luxury he allows himself. He needs new toys. Me. The Barbie of the modern age. Helicopter flying in Southampton. Then me again. It’s like a drug - more! Only the fantasy turns into reality - YOUR FANTASY... One day you don’t evade your trauma anymore. Not your emotionally impoverished mother. A harsh woman. Full of inner poverty. Incapable of showing emotions. Of witnessing, feeling, perceiving them in others. A poor communicator. Poor in every respect. Amos is the second-born, after the tragic death of the first daughter.
“A boy! What mother would not be happy?” Amos asks.
Amos, the man I, the Queen of Mars, chose as my God, my Amos, my lover, Amos. His mother gave him that name for the dead baby of her “patrone” - the family she worked for as a maid. Yes, in Italy maids have “patrone” - that’s owners. A life of serfdom. Who cares, as long as there is enough money! Amos is flying to the stars. With me! In a helicopter or a private jet. In his dreams, his fantasies. You dreamt of Petunia... you called me SORELLINA while you screwed me... little sister, and you told me about her. When she was so small and so innocent. Even today, you like young girls, just about eleven years old, that’s what you say. You talk about the daughter of a friend, regard her - eleven years old - as a perfectly mature, complete woman. You even know those sites on the Internet where you can find them, touch them. Is that your fantasy? You say that you love me like you love her, your sister. Petunia is so ill, poor woman. Always under medical care. Not even your mother can cope - that’s why she is forever on Procida, can’t bear to watch her child die. The only one with her is that dutiful fool of a clerk, a humpbacked pen-pusher at the local municipal offices... her husband. A good job for one like him. He, good enough for one like her - Petunia, his sister. A minimum of non-fertile womanhood, married under pretensions of love. However, perfectly capable of enjoying Dottore’s money now... if only it wasn’t for that little secret Petunia shares with him... And now I do, too. Would it have been better if he had kept quiet?
Amos could be this open only with me, could not imagine that I, the only person on the planet who ever was his true friend, would not be with him anymore. He wanted to live in the moment, no plans, no worries, no duties. And me, I believed in love. His love. If you love, you are always right. I loved. HIM.
“I’ve been looking for a suitable house for us for some time now,” he tells me.
“Just you and I. In Ferrara. I want you!”
And I want him. I trust him blindly, unconditionally, without safety net and mirrors. He waits for my wings to carry me heavenwards - I can’t imagine falling into the abyss. There isn’t one. Precluded - completely precluded.
Every Saturday he drives over to his mother’s for lunch.
“My mother is a good cook,” he says. “But her lasagne is dreadful. I was four when I came to Ferrara with my parents and two little sisters. From Molise, the smallest region of Italy. And one of the poorest.”
Nowadays everybody knows Molise, in-between Campagna on the Mediterranean side and the counties on Italy’s Adriatic side - due to the earthquake, where a school caved in and buried all those children under the rubble, thanks to the corrupt system of granting building permits. Building permits based on black favours, such as those Amos receives these days for his swimming pools on Ponza. Procured by the Gransignore in Carozza?
At least that’s what it said in all the papers in Italy. And not just there. A recorded phone call from the Gransignore to the local planning authority. The building permit was granted by someone in charge at that authority. Philosophia di Amos - that’s what he calls it, his company. The employee was arrested for the “favore”, the favour. The company receiving those building permits is one of Amos’ many enterprises. As the only “aministra-tore delegato” - the only managing director - of swimming pools on Ponza - he’s swimming right in the middle of all that corruption. There have never been swimming pools on the island’s densely built-up steep hillsides. Not with the Romans and not with the Greeks. But now! And rumours concerning the corrupt Gransignore in Carozza are reverberating across the entire country. Not much luck in this case, is there? The corruption will get in the way of political planning... or will it? After all, we’re in Italy...
POLITICA & CORRIJZIONE - POLITICS & CORRUPTION
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