Numero Zero (2 page)

The trouble is, you don't get used to the idea: you still feel sure that someday or other you'll complete all the exams and do your thesis. And anyone who nurtures impossible hopes is already a loser. Once you come to realize it, you just give up.


At first I found work as a tutor to a German boy, too stupid to go to school, in the Engadin. Excellent climate, acceptably isolated, and I held out for a year as the money was good. Then one day the boy's mother pressed herself against me in a corridor, letting me understand that she was available. She had buck teeth and a hint of a mustache, and I politely indicated that I wasn't of the same mind. Three days later I was fired because the boy was making no progress.


After that I made a living as a hack journalist. I wanted to write for magazines, but the only interest came from a few local newspapers, so I did things like reviews of provincial shows and touring companies, earning a pittance. I had just enough time to review the warm-up act, peeping from the wings at the dancing girls dressed in their sailor suits and following them to the milk bar, where they would order a suppertime caffè latte, and if they weren't too hard up, a fried egg. I had my first sexual experiences then, with a singer, in exchange for an indulgent write-up for a newspaper in Saluzzo.


I had no place I could call home. I lived in various cities (I moved to Milan once I received the call from Simei), checking proofs for at least three publishing houses (university presses, never for the large publishers), and edited the entries for an encyclopedia (which meant checking the dates, titles of works, and so on). Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else: the pleasures of erudition are reserved for losers. The more a person knows, the more things have gone wrong.


I spent several years reading manuscripts that publishers (sometimes important ones) passed on to me, as in a publishing house no one has any wish to read the manuscripts that just turn up. They used to pay me five thousand lire per manuscript. I'd spend the whole day stretched out in bed reading furiously, then write an opinion on two sheets of paper, employing the best of my sarcasm to destroy the unsuspecting author, while at the publishing house there was a sigh of relief and a letter promptly dispatched to the improvident wretch: So sorry to say no, etc. etc. Reading manuscripts that are never going to be published can become a vocation.


Meanwhile there was the business with Anna, which ended as it had to end. After that I was never able (or have steadfastly refused) to find any interest in a woman, since I was afraid of messing it up again. I sought out sex for therapeutic purposes, the occasional casual encounter where you don't need to worry about falling in love, one night and that's it, thank you, and the occasional relationship for payment, so as not to become obsessed by desire.


All this notwithstanding, I dreamed what all losers dream, about one day writing a book that would bring me fame and fortune. To learn how to become a great writer, I became what in the last century was called the
nègre
(or ghostwriter, as they say today, to be politically correct) for an author of detective stories who gave himself an American name to improve sales, like the actors in spaghetti westerns. But I enjoyed working in the shadows, hidden behind a double veil (the Other's and the Other's other name).


Writing detective stories for somebody else was easy, all you had to do was imitate the style of Chandler or, at worst, Mickey Spillane. But when I tried writing a book of my own, I realized that in describing someone or something, I'd always be making cultural allusions: I couldn't just say that so-and-so was walking along on a bright cloudless afternoon, but would end up saying he was walking “beneath a Canaletto sky.” I know that this was what D'Annunzio used to do: in order to say that a certain Costanza Landbrook had a particular quality, he would write that she seemed like a creation of Thomas Lawrence; of Elena Muti he observed that her features recalled certain profiles of early Moreau, and that Andrea Sperelli reminded him of the portrait of the unknown gentleman in the Borghese Gallery. And to understand what's going on in a novel, you had to thumb through issues of art history magazines on sale in the bookstalls.


If D'Annunzio was a bad writer, that didn't mean I had to be one. To rid myself of the habit of citing others, I decided not to write at all.


In short, mine hadn't been much of a life. And now, at my age, I receive Simei's invitation. Why not? Might as well try it.


What do I do? If I stick my nose outside, I'll be taking a risk. It's better to wait here. There are some boxes of crackers and cans of meat in the kitchen. I still have half a bottle of whiskey left over from last night. It might help to pass a day or two. I'll pour a few drops (and then perhaps a few more, but only in the afternoon, since drinking in the morning numbs the mind) and try to go back to the beginning of this adventure, no need to refer to my diskette. I recall everything quite clearly, at least at the moment.


Fear of death concentrates the mind.


2

“A
BOOK
?”
I ASKED SIMEI
.

“A book. The memoirs of a journalist, the story of a year's work setting up a newspaper that will never be published. The title of the newspaper is to be
Domani
, tomorrow, which sounds like a slogan for our government: tomorrow, we'll talk about it tomorrow! So the title of the book has to be
Domani: Yesterday
. Good, eh?”

“And you want me to write the book? Why not write it yourself? You're a journalist, no? At least, given you're about to run a newspaper . . .”

“Running a newspaper doesn't necessarily mean you know how to write. The minister of defense doesn't necessarily know how to lob a hand grenade. Naturally, throughout the coming year we'll discuss the book day by day, you'll give it the style, the pep, I'll control the general outline.”

“You mean we'll both appear as authors, or will it be Colonna interviewing Simei?”

“No, no, my dear Colonna, the book will appear under my name. You'll have to disappear after you've written it. No offense, but you'll be a
nègre
. Dumas had one, I don't see why I can't have one too.”

“And why me?”

“You have some talent as a writer—”

“Thank you.”

“—and no one has ever noticed it.”

“Thanks again.”

“I'm sorry, but up to now you've only worked on provincial newspapers, you've been a cultural slave for several publishing houses, you've written a novel for someone (don't ask me how, but I happened to pick it up, and it works, it has a certain style), and at the age of fifty or so you've raced here at the news that I might perhaps have a job for you. So you know how to write, you know what a book is, but you're still scraping around for a living. No need to be ashamed. I too—if I'm about to set up a newspaper that will never get published, it's because I've never been short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. I've only ever run a sports weekly and a men's monthly—for men alone, or lonely men, whichever you prefer.”

“I could have some self-respect and say no.”

“You won't, because I'm offering you six million lire per month for a year, in cash, off the books.”

“That's a lot for a failed writer. And then?”

“And then, when you've delivered the book, let's say around six months after the end of the experiment, another ten million lire, lump sum, in cash. That will come from my own pocket.”

“And then?”

“And then that's your affair. You'll have earned more than eighty million lire, tax free, in eighteen months, if you don't spend it all on women, horses, and champagne. You'll be able to take it easy, look around.”

“Let me get this straight. You're offering me six million lire a month—and (if I may say so) who knows how much you're getting out of this—there'll be other journalists to pay, to say nothing of the costs of production and printing and distribution, and you're telling me someone, a publisher I imagine, is ready to back this experiment for a year, then do nothing with it?”

“I didn't say he'll do nothing with it. He'll gain his own benefit from it. But me, no, not if the newspaper isn't published. Of course, the publisher might decide in the end that the newspaper must appear, but at that point it'll become big business and I doubt he'll want me around to look after it. So I'm ready for the publisher to decide at the end of this year that the experiment has produced the expected results and that he can shut up shop. That's why I'm covering myself: if all else fails, I'll publish the book. It'll be a bombshell and should give me a tidy sum in royalties. Alternatively, so to speak, there might be someone who won't want it published and who'll give me a sum of money, tax free.”

“I follow. But maybe, if you want me to work as a loyal collaborator, you'll need to tell me who's paying, why the
Domani
project exists, why it's perhaps going to fail, and what you're going to say in the book that, modesty aside, will have been written by me.”

“All right. The one who's paying is Commendator Vimercate. You'll have heard of him . . .”

“Vimercate. Yes I have. He ends up in the papers from time to time: he controls a dozen or so hotels on the Adriatic coast, owns a large number of homes for pensioners and the infirm, has various shady dealings around which there's much speculation, and controls a number of local TV channels that start at eleven at night and broadcast nothing but auctions, telesales, and a few risqué shows . . .”

“And twenty or so publications.”

“Rags, I recall, celebrity gossip, magazines such as
Them, Peeping Tom
, and weeklies about police investigations, like
Crime Illustrated
,
What They Never Tell Us
, all garbage, trash.”

“Not all. There are also specialist magazines on gardening, travel, cars, yachting,
Home Doctor
. An empire. A nice office this, isn't it? There's even the ornamental fig, like you find in the offices of the kingpins in state television. And we have an
open plan
, as they say in America, for the news team, a small but dignified office for you, and a room for the archives. All rent-free, in this building that houses all the Commendatore's companies. For the rest, each dummy issue will use the same production and printing facilities as the other magazines, so the cost of the experiment is kept to an acceptable level. And we're practically in the city center, unlike the big newspapers where you have to take two trains and a bus to reach them.”

“But what does the Commendatore expect from this experiment?”

“The Commendatore wants to enter the inner sanctum of finance, banking, and perhaps also the quality papers. His way of getting there is the promise of a new newspaper ready to tell the truth about everything. Twelve zero issues—0/1, 0/2, and so on—dummy issues printed in a tiny number of exclusive copies that the Commendatore will inspect, before arranging for them to be seen by certain people he knows. Once the Commendatore has shown he can create problems for the so-called inner sanctum of finance and politics, it's likely they'll ask him to put a stop to such an idea. He'll close down
Domani
and will then be given an entry permit to the inner sanctum. He buys up, let's say, just two percent of shares in a major newspaper, a bank, a major television network.”

I let out a whistle. “Two percent is a hell of a lot! Does he have that kind of money?”

“Don't be naïve. We're talking about finance, not business. First buy, then wait and see where the money to pay for it comes from.”

“I get it. And I can also see that the experiment would work only if the Commendatore keeps quiet about the newspaper not being published in the end. Everyone would have to think that the wheels of his press were eager to roll, so to speak.”

“Of course. The Commendatore hasn't even told me about the newspaper not appearing. I suspect, or rather, I'm sure of it. And the colleagues we will meet tomorrow mustn't know. They have to work away, believing they are building their future. This is something only you and I know.”

“But what's in it for you if you then write down all you've been doing to help along the Commendatore's blackmail?”

“Don't use the word ‘blackmail.' We publish news. As the
New York Times
says, ‘All the news that's fit to print.'”

“And maybe a little more.”

“I see we understand each other. If the Commendatore then uses our dummy issues to intimidate someone, or wipes his butt with them, that's his business, not ours. But the point is, my book doesn't have to tell the story of what decisions were made in our editorial meetings. I wouldn't need you for that—a tape recorder would do. The book has to give the idea of another kind of newspaper, has to show how I labored away for a year to create a model of journalism independent of all pressure, implying that the venture failed because it was impossible to have a free voice. To do this, I need you to invent, idealize, write an epic, if you get my meaning.”

“The book will say the opposite of what actually happened. Fine. But you'll be proved wrong.”

“By whom? By the Commendatore, who would have to say no, the aim of the project was simple extortion? He'd be happier to let people think he'd been forced to quit because he too was under pressure, that he preferred to kill the newspaper so it didn't become a voice controlled by someone else. And our news team? Are they going to say we're wrong when the book presents them as journalists of the highest integrity? It'll be a
betzeller
that nobody will be able or willing to attack.”