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 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
